You're easier to love from afar (open)

[youwonscience]

WHO: Cosima and open
WHAT: Open post/catchall for Wintermarch
WHEN: Throughout the month; if you need to back or forward date due to Orlais plot, feel free
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: No warnings to start except for the potential of sad Cosima in some threads.

Tavern

Cosima's been moping long enough. She says this silently and firmly to herself several times a day, in fact. Enough moping. Get out, do some good, meet some people.

And while she's generally inclined to constructive action, Cosima isn't made of stone. After all, she's seen with her own eyes how possible it is she could be gone any moment without warning. (Home or ... wherever.) Carpe diem.

Which, loosely translated, means "have some wine at the tavern and flirt with ladies, because fuck it, you're in another world and you might as well." (Unless she sees a friend first, of course.)

Barracks (semi-closed; you know who you are)

While Avery is at work, Cosima has the room to herself. This makes it an excellent place to hold a meeting, and there's some unfinished business to attend to. She gathers Church and Jamie and does some digging to see if there's anyone else Ruby had roped into this idea before she left. Cosima is, by no means, a natural entrepreneur. But it felt like something she owed her friend.

"So. Who's ever run an eatery before?"

Points Around Skyhold (choose your own adventure)

As far as Cosima can determine, there's not just one place to declare: "Hi, I'd like to formally join the Inquisition" if you're not a fighter, a healer or a mage. She knows she can be useful, surely, but she doesn't know exactly where and she isn't entirely sure who to ask.

But she's seen a little of this world now - run up against Venatori and seen some of the effects of rifts that are much more destructive than spitting rifters into Thedas. She's determined to help.

So she'll keep trying to find a way in. There's a lot of research that goes on in Skyhold; surely someone can use an off-world research assistant.

Comments

[youwonscience]

Cosima licks her lips, thinking, and settles on lightening the mood: "Well, traditionally for two women drinking wine together, I should ask if you have a crush on anyone."

[thecookery]

"Really? That's your first question?" Just look how unimpressed she is, Cosima.

[youwonscience]

She laughs, despite herself.

"I didn't come wish a list prepared. Why, do you?"

[thecookery]

A long-suffering sigh. "I mean..." Fine. She is trying here. Cosima had better appreciate this. "Maybe a little, but it's not one even worth talking about, mind you."

Maker swallow her whole just like she is swallowing this wine far too quickly, just before mumbling, "I'm not mad enough to think anything'll ever come from it, seeing as it's sort of... on my boss."

[youwonscience]

"Oh shit," Cosima says, sympathetic. "I mean, I've had worse, but that's still not great. But it could maybe work out? I mean ... I've also had worse."

So. There's that.

Cosima is great at this. She takes another drink.

[thecookery]

Avery scowls, but there's no real bite to it. She's just a little embarrassed. "Don't go crying for me or whatever. I'm not some pining sod, all torn up about it."

That would require getting her hopes up, and she is not quite so silly as to try a fool thing like that.

[youwonscience]

"I'm not crying, I'm just expressing sympathy," she said, unbothered. "I promise, you don't look like you're pining. If anything, the opposite."

...whatever... that is.

[thecookery]

She nods. Good, clearly there is no pining here because that would involve, like, caring and stuff, and who would ever admit to a thing like that? "Better for everyone that I just let it go and not get my hopes up or nothing, yeah?"

[youwonscience]

"Okay, I can't go with you that far," Cosima says. "I mean, it's your call. But I kind of feel like life's pretty short. Some crushes you shouldn't act on, probably, but you never know if you assume it won't happen before you even give it a shot."

She takes a longer drink of wine, then adds, "Then again, I fell for someone who was sent to spy on me, so what the hell do I know?"

[thecookery]

Well, that makes Avery's brows shoot up pretty spectacularly and derails any comment she was about to make about anything they had previously discussed.

"Aye, that sounds... less than grand," she eventually offers, then waits for some sort of explanation??

[youwonscience]

"I see you, deflecting from your ... okay, fair, I can't really bring that up then not explain. Long story, though, fair warning."

[thecookery]

"We can get back to me after."

You know, if Cosima still remembers to, assuming this story is as long as she says it is.

[youwonscience]

"Okay, so. I don't remember if I ... have we talked about clones before?" She doesn't think so, but just in case. (The lyrium poisoning means she can't be positive, for one thing. Lots of he recovery period was fuzzy.)

"They're basically like identical twins, except instead of naturally happening, people use science to develop them."

[thecookery]

She tries. She really does. But wow does Avery fail at following that, and it is very clear on her face.

"Like shape-shifting? To look like someone else?" she asks, trying to relate it to something she's at least vaguely aware of, if not particularly familiar with.

[youwonscience]

"No, not. Hm." Cosima tries to back way, way up. "Okay. So you've got twins, and they're not the same person, but they look physically just like one another or really close. That's because they're basically like two houses made by the same builder off the same blueprint. Only it's just an accident; just a chance of nature that happens every now and again. Does that make any sense?"

This is way easier to explain after Gregor Mendel and his pea plants.

[thecookery]

A slow nod. "More or less."

[youwonscience]

"Okay. So ... to massively simplify, but scientists - doctors, healers - in my world have figured out a way to make a whole bunch of organisms from the same blueprints, so to speak. On purpose. They did animals first - a sheep, famously. And about 30 years ago a group of researchers figured out how to do it with humans."

Tiny, facetious jazz hands.

"Thus me. And at least 12 others, almost certainly more. I don't know for sure."

[thecookery]

"So," she starts, watching Cosima carefully for any moment she wants to cut in and correct her here, "you're saying you've a bunch of twins running around somewhere. Because someone figured out how to make a... person recipe? And went a little mad with it for some reason or another?"

[youwonscience]

She laughs, ruefully. "Yeah, actually. That's not how I'd put it, but it's not wrong. I didn't know myself until not long before I came to Thedas. There's a lot of treatments out there for couples who want kids but have trouble having them; the people with the recipe took advantage of that to hand us off to unsuspecting couples, really far apart so it was unlikely we'd ever run into one another by accident."

Cosima adjusts her glasses, then adds, "Problem is, what good is an experiment if you can't measure how it's going? So they had to have people in our lives reporting information back to them. See how we were doing as we grew up."

[thecookery]

Okay, she's not even going to bother asking about the hows of all that, because it'll be pointless and confusing to attempt. Instead, Avery just frowns and rubs at her shoulder idly, saying, "I don't get it. Why all the secrecy? It sounds like a lot of trouble."

[youwonscience]

"Couple reasons. There's the possibility it'll be found illegal, once people realize it can be done, for one thing. The country I'm from and the country where the company is set up both don't allow you to own human beings, but they do have laws protecting what's called intellectual property - a technique or an idea you can use to make money that you don't want to give people access to. The recipe, in this case. If no one knows your intellectual property is actually people, you can keep control of it easier."

She exhales. "Also for control. My sisters and I are all adults now, and it's reasonable to think most or all of us are kind of angry about someone thinking they own us. And, um. You know I go to the healing tent regularly? That disease is something they created by accident in an effort to keep us from being able to have kids of our own."

So all this is pretty fucked, really.

[thecookery]

"Right. Gold. Should've figured," she grumbles. "Arseholes."

There's a quiet moment after that where she seems to be struggling with her thoughts over something, trying to get the words to come out right, but eventually she just sighs. "How bad is it?"

[youwonscience]

This was not a part of the story Cosima had planned getting into, exactly, and she glances down into her wine glass. But it's only for a moment; Avery's not always forthcoming, but she's always honest, and Cosima feels she deserves the same in return.

"Here it's manageable, as long as I have access to spirit healing. The healers can't cure me, but they can keep me on my feet and reasonably healthy as long as I go see them every few weeks." The lack of comment on whether it's manageable where she's from speaks for itself.

[thecookery]

Not sure what to say to that, Avery hesitates briefly before moving over next to Cosima and giving her shoulder a little nudge. It's the best move she's got right now, man.

[youwonscience]

It works, inasmuch as it coaxes a brief smile from Cosima. She leans a bit into Avery.

"So, yeah. Anyway, all that's ... so since we're not even supposed to know we're clones, they can't just randomly ask us to submit to medical tests. But they need data. So they get close to us through people in our lives, who can observe us without raising suspicion. I'd figured out that my girlfriend was the one watching me, but I'd just dumped her to move halfway across the country. And then out of nowhere this gorgeous foreign student turns up in my new program."