faderift | (OPEN)

WHO: Cosima Niehaus - and you?
WHAT: Catch-all log for August
WHEN: Handwavey depending on when your character will be around Skyhold
WHERE: ...Skyhold
NOTES: While Cosima is going to be ill in one of the starters, it is fair to assume she'll be back on her feet within a week or two, so feel free to assume she looks fine if you run into her outside the healer's tent. (Alternately, if you'd like her looking a little peaky as a hook, that works too!) If you want something other than the hooks below, or want to chat first, DM me or grab me on plurk.

I. Healer's Tents

Cosima has been instructed to rest, and at first, the instruction is unnecessary; she's too weak to do much else. But spirit healing seems to have done the trick, at least temporarily, and as her strength starts to come back, it brings her curiosity with it. Thus, whenever no one is there to order her back to her cot, she wanders - mostly respectfully keeping her distance, but occasionally asking a question if she thinks she can get away with it. Some of the healing is related to medicine as she understands it. Some of it she has no frame of reference for at all. But concerns like "not wearing herself out" are secondary to learning more about what's going on as they patch people back together. She's not as well as she'd like to think, but she's well enough to get restless.

II. Kitchens

It is well known that convalescence requires baked goods. Cosima is still hesitant about overstepping, since she technically hasn't joined the Inquisition; she's a refugee, and she's well aware of how long she wouldn't last if someone decided to kick her out. So she is very scrupulous about asking first before she takes anything and about trying not to be unreasonable in how frequently she asks.

It's not her fault that those little buns with the jam that tastes like peach in the center are so addictive.

III. Various Around Skyhold - Roommate Search

Once she's determined that she's eligible for a barracks room, Cosima has decided to get one. What she hasn't entirely resigned herself to facing is a randomly assigned roommate. She's too old for that nonsense. On the other hand, she doesn't exactly have a huge roster of acquaintances to ask. So she's compromising by asking around. If someone else is looking for a roommate, at least they can have a beer together and make sure they don't hate each other before committing to cohabitation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Okay, first of all, I'm checkcing with people I know first. But a lot of them are in Orlais, it seems like. Second of all, do people actually use the board that way? I thought it was for like... important stuff."

She doesn't mind the teasing, but hey, can't hurt to ask.

"...You know, I don't know? I don't think that could hurt, it's for like notices and shit, why not, but then it'll have the same risks as posting to craigslist, so..." SHRUG. "Do you have, like...requirements...?"

Cosima laughs. "I mean, I didn't make a physical list. Maybe I should. Minimum level of hygiene. Be considerate and put a hairtie on the door or something if you're using the room for sex. No surprise pets without talking it over first?"

"So the basics of a decent human being and roomie." He has to pause and think on that for a second. "Wait, decent person. Man, when the only other sentient race I know out there is crazy aliens, it's hard to remember that being humanist is like...potentially super offensive here."

"Decent person," she agrees. "Definitely not being picky as to species. That said, you sound like you haven't experienced any truly awful roommates. Like, sometimes you have to specify, dude. I had a roommate in grad school put a pizza in the oven and fall asleep. We didn't die, but we were the proud owners of a giant, pizza-sized hockey puck in the morning."

"That's just normal roomie shit," he says with a small tch sound. "One of mine was really...let's call him special. The brand of special that gets people killed if they aren't super careful." Case in point! But maybe don't say 'yeah he killed me at least once' to someone without first establishing several other facts first. "Like filling your gun with crayons for bullets special. That was an adventure. My other roomie gave birth to an alien baby demon spawn. So that was fun."

"Okay, I mean, I guess mine could have burned the place down, but no actual weapon sabotage was involved," she concedes. "But tell me more about the baby. Half alien, half demon? Or was it, like, the alien version of a demon?"

She's kidding. Probably. Right?

(Then again, is he kidding?)

"Not literal demon, we don't have those in sci-fi space war future, thank god." Look, Thedas has demons, he just needs to make this point very clear. "It's small, ugly, colored kind of like his armor, which I'm not sure was deliberate since that's not, y'know, in genetics, or crazy random happenstance. Said blarg a lot. Was a disgusting little shit. Tucker was so proud to be a dad, even if it almost killed him. I...I really did not ask how it got out of him, and I am way happier never knowing."

"Okay, I'm going to keep asking follow-up questions until you stop me, fair warning. So your male roommate gave birth? Given your reaction, I take it that's not common, either. Was there a mother?"

Ding-ding, you've mentioned genetics to a geneticist.

"Uhhhhhh. There was an alien who somehow did the down and dirty to him without him even realizing." This is weird this is weird help. "I...actually have no idea if they have genders. We call Junior a guy, though. That's the alien spawn's name."

"Wow, okay. But he wasn't just an incubator, then? Do you see any traits in the child that comes from him, not just the alien parent?" She is well and truly interested, enough that she's somewhat missing his discomfort on the topic. It's a shame she can't get observations. Or samples.

"He...came out teal-ish? Aqua? I'm not sure we ever decided what the fuck Tucker's armor color was really called, like a green-blue that's more green than blue--whatever, the little cretin came out looking like his armor, which isn't...y'know, genetics related, sssso I guess it's just a very odd coincidence. Tucker kept trying to be a good dad to it, I dunno, maybe he's got dad issues." JOIN THE CLUB. "I mean he was teaching it to be like him? Our doc really seemed to enjoy studying the fucktot. I'm just glad it's probably dead."

Haha probably. Oh the things one misses because it's in the future because he's dead and will never get to know.

Armor color definitely should not be heritable. "Did the kid get sick? A hybrid might have viability issues, I'd think."

Let's not talk about Daddy issues, she did not say, as she couldn't help but briefly think of not her real dad, but the unknown scientists who stamped their intellectual property notice all over her genetic material.

"I don't...think so? But who can really tell with an alien. We were trained to kill 'em, not, y'know, raise them and give birth to them." And maybe if Tex maybe survived until the Meta got her, maybe that little shitbag did, too. He almost kind of hopes so, for Tucker's sake, but at the same time, if it died, good riddance. Emotions are stupid and weird like that.

"This...really isn't something that's going to potentially happen to any of your roommates here, I hope, so."

She bursts out laughing. "God, yeah, I hope not. No spontaneous, biologically improbable pregnancies. I'd be interested to watch, but not quite from that close up."

"Y'know, I don't think I'm at risk for that happening to me, and I'm a great roommate." Says who? "Half the time I don't even sleep on anything that's actually a bed, so if you need, y'know, personal time, sock on the door, works every time. If only some people could remember that. Or just...spray paint some signs on a rock to hide behind. ...That was also gave-birth-to-alien-baby guy, he literally has a rock for dude time to hide behind. The army makes people weird. Or exacerbates weirdness."

"Wow, yeah, my experience with roommates is pretty much limited to college dorms. I'd think the army would be... weirder."

Undergraduates were weird in their own ways, but even so.

"Also, I'd have to think there are more comfortable places for personal time than 'behind a rock.' Maybe that's just me."

"Look, after he spray painted it with I don't really want to know what, I just decided to leave it alone and let the new guy be stupid enough to go walk into that. ...I'm also trying really hard not to think about places in Skyhold that might be private enough for that that aren't, like, private personal locked rooms some people have."

(OPEN)

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