faderift | Tell all the neighbors to start knocking down walls (Catchall)

Kirkwall has been an adjustment. As promised, it isn't boring by any stretch; Cosima feels both more exposed and more free in a city, rather than a fortress. Her visit to a possible future left her shaken but determined; for as long as she's in Thedas, its fight is her fight too.

(She resisted the urge to make a joke about whether she'd get a lanyard when she received word she'd been officially assigned to the research division. Cosima knows making jokes no one gets is her whistling in the dark, but it's not going to win her many friends. She needs to watch herself now that she interacts with people outside the Inquisition more often.)

She's never going to blend in, but a pair of plain leather gloves mean at a glance she's just a stranger, not necessarily a rifter; other than her glasses and her hair, her attire is now of necessity more Thedas than not. So she can take some walks, and do some listening and not feel like she's the subject of an experiment. Sometimes.

Today, her walk has a particular purpose. She'd meant to track down Wren sooner, but the chaos of the move had kept both of them otherwise occupied. Today seems like a good day for it though, and if tracking her down takes a while, Cosima won't totally mind.

The pen is seldom mightier than the sword, but lately it's in greater demand.

The bulk of the Gallows have been cleared, the rest of the Inquisition's northern arm have arrived. That means less to haul, more time to think. Too much of it, really; if she little misses carting skulls, at least it kept her own occupied.

"Ah —" Wren glances up, and for a moment, it's as though she looks right through her. A moment only: "— Cosima."

Her smile's small, but honest for it. Papers shuffle aside, she moves to stand, to drag over a second chair (an interim space, this, a jumble of boxes yet unsorted).

"I trust the journey smoother, this time around?"

"I mean, not a high bar to clear, but yeah, definitely. An improvement on the last time." She smiles a little, coming to take the second chair when it's in place. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything you don't need a break from?"

"This," A grand gesture (a joke of one) to the disarray. "Is diplomacy."

Apparently.

"And you are an emissary of your home, no? A dignitary of unparalleled dignity." Something in her face twists briefly wry. "— I will not tell if you do not."

When she sits again, something faint eases in her frame.

"I would offer you a drink had I yet replaced my stock," This is a blessing, this is how Cosima avoids drinking paint thinner. It really wouldn't do to have her liver go before her lungs. "How has our return been treating you?"

"It's, um. Better than the alternative of not getting back would have been, so there's that?" Cosima rubs the back of her neck, idly glancing over the spread of papers. "I guess it's weird that I thought of Skyhold as 'home' at all, but I guess I sort of did? Or like ... the way you think of a camp as 'home' relative to the rest of the woods while you're there at least. Does that make any sense?"

She is actively trying to use metaphors that might translate. Progress?

"How've you been?"

"You'd been there some time, yes? There is no disloyalty in finding some peace of a place. Maker knows you'd as much claim to it as anyone there."

No one still living could have called Skyhold home before the Inquisition encamped. Wren leans back in her seat, makes a conscious effort to — look, well, however it is that relaxed people look. It's a bad impression. She gives up in short order,

"Better than had we stayed," She admits, with a slight shrug that acknowledges yeah, that's still a pretty low bar for both of us. "Though some days it feels as though we carried it with us."

As if knowing of the future might confirm it. A foolish fear: They've already taken steps to see that course changed. And yet,

"Kirkwall, at least, is one fuck of a distraction."

Cosima laughs a little. "It is that. I'd heard some about Kirkwall, before I came, but the reality is ..." She trails off, looking for the best way to describe it.

"I mean, I guess it's kind of obvious, but I'd never been in a part of Thedas where people actually live? Of course people were living in Skyhold, but it was a fortress with like, a tent city outside, that's not the same. And I knew there was a whole world out here, like, all of you are from the rest of it, but it's just. It's different to seeing it, you know?"

She isn't sure how much sense it makes, but at least she's pretty sure Wren won't be annoyed by her attempts to describe a really weird situation.

"More real, perhaps."

Her chin tips in consideration. There's no fitting comparison for the situation, really — save maybe that other time. To break from the Gallows and find the landscape beyond it plunged into something beyond easy understanding. Even then, there'd been some context to own.

But an alien world, with all its strange entanglements? Easier to hold that a distance, when one might confront it only in pieces. Less overwhelming; adrift in a sea of lives who can't conceive of the one you left behind.

"The first time I saw Val Royeaux, I could not believe how many people there were. All of them with their own private histories, hopes. We are such a tight presence here... the reminder may do us good."

"Your home, it has cities, yes?"

She can't imagine you could support a university without them, but if there's anything she's learned of their disparate guests, it's how madly different some of their own homes are.

"Mm, yeah. Big ones. I grew up in a city, it's what I'm used to." Even Kirkwall is small by her standards, though Cosima's been surprised by how familiar it feels in some ways. Differences in technology and culture aside, it seems that when you gather enough people together in a given area, some recognizable patterns begin to emerge.

"What about you? I know that Orlais has some bigger cities than the ones I've seen here, but are you from one, or somewhere smaller?"

"A town called Charlans — very east. Pigs and sheep."

"I came to the capital when I was fifteen." A gesture, vague. Difficult to say that you live in a city when you spend your days above it, else far beyond its walls. "If you ask anyone here of Val Royeaux, they shall each account her differently. But she was a wonder, at the time."

"Had you ever been beyond a city before?"

"Now and then, sure." Cosima shrugs. "We'd go camping as a family when I was younger, sometimes, and I took a trip with a friend after finishing one level of schooling where we mainly visited small towns." To her credit, Cosima doesn't even really try to properly describe the concept of a road trip.

"But not to live, no. Everywhere I've lived has been big enough to count as a city, or at least the outskirts of one. I'd like to see Val Royeaux one day. The university, especially, but in general - I've heard a lot." A lot of different things, too, as Wren observed herself.

After returning from her time travel misadventure, Cosima was among those given a clean bill of health, beyond a few bruises and scrapes. She'd been lucky, and those more suited for combat had kept her safe. But that had been in the first rush of their return, and she hadn't had time to visit a healer again before the move.

She feels well today, though part of her knows that she could well be living on borrowed time, even here. Spirit healing has kept her in better shape than she has any right to expect -- and she's grateful -- but part of her wonders how long it is until biology trumps magic. Does that happen? It must, she thinks, but tries not to dwell on it.

Instead, today is a scheduled check-in, and a chance to more properly say hello to her acquaintances among the healers. Given her track record with field missions, it seems fair to prove she got to Kirkwall in one piece.

He smiles when he sees her, smile a little fainter than usual due to them being in the Gallows, but it's there anyway.

"Cosima. I'm glad that the cat's dragged you in." She wouldn't have been the first person to dodge a scheduled appointment, but it's nice she hadn't. It means he gets to be happy to see her rather than worried while he looks for her.

"I'd like to see how the moving is treating you. Being down from the mountains has to be helpful, but there's certainly more humidity here. Come on into the room."

Because rooms they are, now, rather than tents. It's the one change he welcomes - the room is so much easier to keep warm.

She spreads her hands, as if inviting him to notice that she is neither evidently bleeding or coughing at the moment. "Hey, look, I made it all the way to Kirkwall and I didn't even get seasick," she says, lightly.

Field mission mishaps aside, she's a good patient generally. For one thing, se knows what could happen otherwise, and Herian is no longer here to heroically if embarrassingly drag her to healer.

"Looks like you got an upgrade in the move. You settling in okay?"

"Mmm." The noise is friendly enough, though his face is a little pale.

"I'm settling in better than anyone would have thought likely. How is that for an answer?" He gestures toward the cot; she knows the drill. "Though I have to say not getting seasick made the trip a little easier. Are you... Are you liking Kirkwall?"

It's not an easy city to like, even without his history here.

"So far so good, I guess. Definitely a change from Skyhold." To put it mildly. She obediently sits on the cot. "It's sort of nice to be back in a city, though. I'm more used to it than a fortress, even if it's a really different kind of city than home."

She's not sure whether she should press him or not; she doesn't want to seem like she isn't interested in his well-being, but on the other hand she doesn't want to overstep.

She settles on: "I guess I'm kind of just trying to make the best of everything, you know? Kirkwall or not, I can't go home so ... I'm doing what I can to help."

"And this city can use a lot of help." He can't go home either, though it's for far different reasons than her. Maybe one day they'll find a way for Rifters to return, at least.

"How different are the cities you're used to from this?" As he talks, he casts, searching for the usual issues Cosima deals with. They're there. They don't go away, which is a little frustrating. Granted, this isn't the first time he's dealt with chronic issues that can't be healed. Anders simply feels a little like he's failing when he can't fix things, only hold them at bay.

At least he can hold it at bay. He's not losing her anytime soon. That's a comfort.

She's always distracted when he's casting, interested and giving the air of someone who wants to be taking notes. She doesn't disturb the process, though, instead answering the question.

"They're way bigger, for one thing. Our technology level has sustained a higher birthrate, and it's been decades since we had a major land war or a really big disease outbreak we couldn't contain, so there's just ... a lot of people. Cleaner in some ways, dirtier in different ones; we mainly get around using machines, not horses or walking, so crossing a street is a lot more harrowing."

He frowns despite himself as he wraps up the casting. It's not her fault. He just wishes he really could make a difference here. But now he has the attention span to listen and nod along.

"I may know a thing or two about Harrowing," Anders says as a weak joke, realizing only moments later that she... probably wouldn't get it. Oh well. It wasn't really funny to start with.

"You've a lot of... doctors? then?" That has to be the word they use, with no magic.

He gets a flicker of a smile for the harrowing comment - not because she doesn't get it, exactly, because she's been told what the Harrowing is, but because she's not sure she's allowed to laugh at that joke as a non-mage.

Instead of lingering, though, she nods at his question. "Yeah. And nurses, and people who work on keeping people healthy in other ways too. Researchers, and people who make our equivalent of potions and poultices, and people who specialize in very specific kinds of medicine, either treating one area of the body or focusing on one type of disease. It's a business, which definitely has its major downsides, but it also means a lot of people who wouldn't do it out of altruism do it because it's well-rewarded."

"We've those who want to make a business out of it too, including those who haven't bothered with much learning." He sighs, stepping back to signal the end of the exam before taking a seat. "People who stick a little elfroot in water and tell people it will cure everything, or worse, try and fail to make a tincture with a deep mushroom and sentence their desperate patients to an agonizing death. But at least now that we're free we can hopefully change things around."

It depends so much on people accepting mages. He's not sure what they can make happen, quite frankly, but he's going to try.

"Sometimes I wonder if our world will ever get close to yours, or Hermione's, or Kirk's. If we'll have anything remotely close to the peace and hope it sounds like you've reached. I want us to. It's... going to be difficult, though, and take the cooperation of people who will lose what power they've sought their whole lives if they help."

And people are selfish.

"Oh my god, we've got some of that too. There's this thing back home where you're supposed to dilute a drop of something - usually but not always something that would make you sick - in a ton of water, then dilute a drop of that in a bunch more water, and keep doing it and somehow the like, ghost of the thing you're diluting will infuse the water somehow and cure you. Total bullshit, but a lot of people buy into it, especially for stuff there's not an effective cure for."

She stretches, as if settling back into her frame after the healing. It's not an unpleasant sensation, but it's still weird for her.

"Man, I don't even know if Hermione and I will make it to Kirk's. It sounds like they've sorted a lot of shit out. We don't have big land wars, true, but there's a lot of injustice. Lots of people still starve to death, or die of treatable diseases because they're poor. I mean, not to rain on your parade, but people suck back home too, especially in the aggregate."

His expression as she describes the dilution process is aghast. Her people have actual technology, actual doctors, and yet they turn to what's basically water? Granted, water is a good thing. There are many who don't get as much clean water as they should and suffer for it. But this is something else entirely.

"The poor suffer in so many worlds. I don't know that ours will even make it to where yours is. Kirk's level of prosperity and peace..." He sighs. "I wish I had hope. I wish I believed that we could come out of this war with Corypheus and grow from it. Instead, I find it more than likely that we'll defeat Corypheus only to have Tevinter and the Qunari invade from different angles, and a grand war where they meet while the Chantry rushes to enslave mages yet again so that it will have a powerbase to step on."

And then after that war, there will be another Blight, and more than likely Thedas will be wiped clean. Or there will be just enough remaining to start a new war or a new reason to subjugate some group and grind them into the ground until they rise up. Their world is not a good one.

"I wonder, sometimes, if there are worlds that already failed that will never be represented here. That fell apart as quite the opposite of Kirk's, or even yours, and never made it that far. Or if maybe they get their own visitors, their own Rifters, who can point out that there's other ways."

Cosima rubs the back of her neck, idle and thoughtful. "You're not wrong. But I also think ... I don't know. I think it still matters. Even if we knew, for sure, we could never reach universal peace, I think it's worth trying to get closer. Even here -- shit, we don't have to hit 'utopia' to manage 'better than the future I saw,' you know?"

She's not muted, exactly. Cosima's got a determination to her that's easy to miss, under the mellow friendliness. But it's a serious subject all the same.

"Where I come from, there's still a lot of prejudice and hatred. But we also had centuries of institutionalized, open slavery that has since been largely wiped out. I think that matters. I think even if we fail, it matters that we try."

Even if we fail, it matters that we try. It's a lot of what keeps him going, and he gives her a small smile.

"Failure is still terrifying. The thought of gaining all that we have when there's a chance we could go right back to how it was, that everything we do could be for nothing..." Anders exhales. "But that doesn't mean we should or even can stop. You're right. If a fear of losing everything holds us back, we lose anyway."

He takes another breath.

"And it's the future generations of mages and the future rifters that benefit from establishing things that protect them now, that promote freedom and equality, too." Groundwork is a valid, important cause.

"See? That's totally the spirit. That's why I'm a scientists and not a politician, anyway. I like concrete progress." Let's ignore all the mirky philosophical issues her very existence creates, although she supposes if anyone native to Thedas could sympathize, it would be a mage.

"Everyone deserves a high-five moment now and then. Wait," almost immediately, "has another rifter taught you about high-fives yet?"

Tell all the neighbors to start knocking down walls (Catchall)

For Wren

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For Anders

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