faderift | [Open] Sometimes...

WHO: Jamie and you!
WHAT: Recovery after the events here
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway through the end of Harvestmere
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: CW for references to the shardbearer plot, so torture, forced lyrium ingestion, hallucinations, violence and other Bad Things. The first part in healer tents features lyrium withdrawal and may involve the possibility of the getting glimpses of other people's memories. If you would like to have Jamie pick up your character's memories, let me know via pm or in your header, whichever you prefer.

[Healers Tents]

It's no surprise that after being taken by the Venatori and experimented on, Jamie winds up having an extended stay in the healers tents. Not only does the lyrium have to work its way out of his system, contend with, he has a concussion and cracked ribs to contend with as well, and for the first couple of weeks he's fairly out of it, still having problems distinguishing people he knows here from people he knew back home. As time goes on and the lyrium wears off that starts to improve, slowly but surely, although his head still hurts and it's still hard to breathe.

[Still the healers tents]

Eventually, however, the worst of the lyrium has passed through his system, leaving him more his usual self - and that usual self is one that doesn't much care for being stuck in bed, no matter how injured he is. There's more than one time where he insists he's perfectly fine, and more than one time where he might very well wind up being caught at trying to sneak out of his bed and out of the the healing tents entirely. Whether or not he's successful depends on whoever catches him wants to do...but he's supposed to be resting, so steering him back to lie down is definitely always an option.

[New quarters and out and about]

Finally he's deemed well enough to be able to be let out on his own, and left to his own devices. The very tiny room that he's been working on fixing up for months now is finally done, and he's finally able to move his belongings out from where they've been stored and put them someplace he can call his own. He might have to look into getting a roommate at some point, but for now he works on settling in and getting back into something like a routine. Not too long after he's released from the tents, he gets a present of sorts - a set of dragon armor, crafted from his share of the hide of the dragon he helped to kill months ago. There's a fitting or two to make sure everything is where is should be, but once that's done, he settles into training, both with sword and shard. He knows he's got to be able to control that extra ability it's developed, or at some point someone's going to get hurt that he doesn't want to get hurt. So while sometimes he can be found at the pells like everyone else, other times he's in remote areas, practicing at reliably shooting those small projectiles out of the mark.

Days like that leave him tired and his hand aching, but while he used to pop around to the healers tents, even that ache doesn't seem to be enough to get him to go there any more. Instead he can be found at the tavern having a drink, or tucked away in a corner practicing finger exercises on his chanter. Sometimes he still goes to the stables, too, even though he isn't living there any longer. He likes being around the horses, and here more than anywhere else you can catch him idly carving small pieces of wood. Nothing he does is terribly fancy, but some of pieces do eventually turn into things someone could wear or display - well, if you happen to like tiny figures of various semi-recognizable beasties, that is.

[Once a piper... (end of Harvestmere)]

It takes quite some time for his cracked ribs to heal to the point where it doesn't hurt to draw a breath, and longer still before he's able to sustain the breath he needs to properly play, but eventually, one day, there's a noise that's possibly familiar to the people who know Jamie well - the skirl of bagpipes, the sound carrying from high up on the battlements and traveling throughout Skyhold. Unlike some of the other times he's played, it's a somber sound, the tune itself sad and maybe just a little haunting. There's a reason behind the song, a promise he'd made to himself awhile ago, and even though it may be a little rougher around the edges than usual, it's something he's determined to see through, even if there's a risk someone might come up and try and figure out what's going on. He can deal with that if it happens. Until then, he's going to play.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A baffled expression crosses Jamie's face at that, the word 'metaphorically' not something that he's all that familiar with - and like he's done more than once before, when he goes to try and pronounce the word, he does it in a such a way that it comes out as something completely different.

"Metal...floorically? What's that have to do with anything?"

Artificial intelligence he's at least been told about once or twice, although he can't say as he really understands it. He knows enough, though, to shrug at her question.

"Don't know. You'd have to ask the Doctor. It's his ship. I just travelled in it. We'd not gone to the moon in my day, though. It was in the future, although I've no idea what year. All I know is that there was a moonbase on it at the time."

"Oh, um. A metaphor is like... it's a figure of speech. Like if you say someone is green with envy, you usually don't mean they're literally green. I wasn't sure if you meant 'a mind of her own' as a colorful description or like the ship actually has something we'd understand as a mind."

Time travel. Okay. She's gotten used to magic and demons and being a clone, why not this?

"Oh, aye. I see."

That made more sense, now that she's explained it, and the confusion on his face clears up fairly quickly - only to be replaced by a faint frown as he scratches at an itch on the side of his neck. After a moment, he looks back up and shakes his head.

"Look, like I said, I don't know for sure. The Doctor's never actually said one way or another, just that he can fly the TARDIS just fine. Seems like everytime we went somewhere, though, it's never where we'd intended on going, but it was always where we needed to be, if that makes sense."

"Kind of," Cosima says, but it still strikes her as a dubious method of travel. Better than by rift, granted, but that's a low bar.

"So how did you meet him? The Doctor."

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, really. There might not have been a bunch of demons waiting for them after the TARDIS landed...but usually there were monsters. There were always monsters. It was just a matter of when they'd turn up.

But since it seems to him that she at least somewhat gets the idea of what he's trying to explain, he leaves it at that for the moment. Instead he settles back into his seat, not sure yet if his explanation's going to turn into a story, but deciding he might as well get comfortable either way.

"It was after the battle of Culloden - ah, don't know how much you'd know about that one, but the short version is the English won and we'd lost. I was with the Laird, who'd been injured, and his son and daughter. We'd taken shelter in a wee cottage not far from the battlefield, and the Doctor and two people he was with wound up stumbling into the same place we were, more or less. The Doctor was lucky, though. If he'd not said he'd been able to help the Laird, we'd as likely never given them a chance to prove they weren't there to kill us."

"Geeze." It made some sense, in some ways, that Jaime had been a fighter before he even arrived in Thedas; Cosima isn't sure why it didn't occur to her sooner. It's a world just as alien from her experience as this one, in most ways, for all that she knows at least a little bit about Scotland.

"So could he help, or did he just say that to keep you from attacking, then?"

"He could, aye. Only he'd not exactly had the chance to thanks to Ben. Ben'd gotten ahold of one of our pistols, you see. The Doctor talked him out of using it, and even got him to put it back but..."

While he considers Ben to be a friend, and someone he'd be more than glad to see again, Ben'd also made his share of mistakes. Not that Jamie's immune to that either, but this particular mistake was a doozy, and one that still gets him to shake his head in disbelief even now.

"He was careless with it, and it went off. We weren't hurt, mind, but you know how loud a gun can be, I'm thinking. Not exactly the best idea when there's Redcoats about to hear it."

"Shit, no. Did everyone get away?" Demonstrably Jaime made it out in more or less one piece, and his doctor friend must have too, but that didn't mean everyone else was so lucky.

"Well...no."

He was here, true, and the assumption that he and the Doctor had gotten out alright was probably not a stretch, given that. But things were a bit more complicated then just a simple escape, and after a moment he gives another, smaller shake of his head.

"Alexander, the laird's son, went to try and draw them away from the cottage. He- it didn't work." He doesn't go into details, but his expression says enough on its own without needing to do so. "The rest of us were captured, save for Kirsty and Polly. They'd gone to get some water not long before this took place. It was just as well, though. The Redcoats weren't known for giving quarter to women and bairns. Like as not they'd have wound up where we were, looking at the end of a noose and knowing it was bound for our own necks."

"Yeah, Americans didn't have a great track record with the mercy of the British army either, back then. I'm sorry, that's terrible." Perhaps Jaime was, in some ways, better prepared for Thedas than Cosima was; that didn't make what had happened to him less awful, though.

"How did the rest of you get away? I mean, if you don't mind talking more about it."

"Ah, it could've been worse."

He hadn't been hung, after all, or stuck through with a sword like Alexander. What had happened hadn't been great mind, but it was still better than dying. He appreciates Cosima's sympathy, though, and even gives her a brief smile to let her know as much before the the lines of his face slip back into a more solemn expression.

"We didn't. At least, not at first. There was a man, a solicitor, who was looking for folk to make a profit off of. He'd buy people, claiming it was part of his rights in the disposal of prisoners, ship them overseas and make a profit on them by sell them to the highest bidder. He bought the lot of us and packed us off to Inverness for the journey. The Doctor managed to convince everyone he was a German doctor and not subject to being sold, though, and kept his freedom, more or less. So he was able to work on the inside and see what he could do about actually getting the rest of us free."

"Well, I mean, it sounds like it was the least he could do, really. What a fucking mess." She leans forward a bit, clearly sympathetic. "I guess I could see why Mars would sound appealing. Under the circumstances."

"Aye, well, maybe. It's not like I knew anything about Mars back then. Or space, even. All I knew was that I wasn't sure what to make of the Doctor, and I didn't know if he'd be able to get us out of there."

A small chuckle escaped him as he lifted his glass back up again.

"That's the thing, though. Even if you're not sure about something you're tangled up in, the Doctor'll come up with a plan. He always does, and that was the first time I found our just how clever he could be."

"You kind of sound like you expect him to come crashing into Thedas to get you, sooner or later," she observes, warm. However much the Doctor had complicated Jamie's life, it's clear that Jamie admires him.

[Open] Sometimes...

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