faderift | You're easier to love from afar (open)

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You're easier to love from afar (open)

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.

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Cosima and Avery don't really plan their nights of splitting a bottle of wine -- or two -- in their room. It's more that Cosima's coming back from the tavern, or Avery is coming back from the kitchen, and habit suggests the other will be appreciative of some liquid refreshments.

They haven't talked about looking for a third roommate again. Cosima doubts they're going to.

Without Ruby, Cosima is less inclined to the constant stream of chatter the two of them had developed. She certainly talks more than Avery, true, but she seems a bit tamped down all the same. This particular evening, she says out of nowhere, "Did I ever get around to telling you my girlfriend from home was here?"

Avery has to stop and think for a moment, nose scrunching up slightly with the effort. She doesn't quite remember Cosima using that word to describe anyone before but...

"She the one you were asking about back a bit?" she asks, lifting her head up from the bed she's been lounging on for a little while to look over at Cosima. It's kind of a random question after all, but she thinks she knows her roommate well enough at this point to assume it's going somewhere at least. Even if that somewhere isn't always going to be a place Avery can follow easily.

"Yeah. I mean, I guess she's my ex, really, but since we're literally in different worlds now it probably doesn't matter." She takes a swig of wine, then says, "She was only here for a couple of months, and now she's gone wherever rifters go when they vanish and I spent most of the time avoiding her but..."

Cosima shakes her head. "Anyway. She was a scientist, like me, but even as briefly as she was here, she was teaching herself to fight with Thedas' weapons. Maybe I'm just being ... I don't know. Lazy? Stubborn?"

Granted, Delphine had a bit more knowledge of her own world's weaponry than Cosima did. Still.

Ah. So this is more about something else than Delphine herself.

Pushing herself up into a sitting position, Avery gives Cosima a questioning look and says, "Not everybody has to know how to swing a sword around. Sure, there are times when it helps, but as long as you're halfway smart and you don't go running into danger..."

She shrugs. The only time Avery's had to fight at all since she joined the Inquisition was when she chose to leave the keep for a mission.

"She'd be better at this than I am," Cosima says frankly, because it is sort of about Delphine. "I know it's just random chance, that I'm still here and she's already gone, but she's more ... I don't know what I'm doing here," she finishes, quietly frustrated. "I have skills that are only useful in a world that doesn't exist."

She's not the only one feeling frustrated, as well as slightly uncomfortable. This is one of those moments when there are clearly right words to be said, ones that would help rather than make things worse, and Avery is very aware of this fact... as well as the fact that she has no idea what those words are. She just isn't built that way, as far as she's aware.

But even if she's terrible at speaking, she can at least shut up and listen sometimes, so the only thing she adds is, "What is it you want?"

Cosima huffs a quiet laugh. "Shit, I don't know. More wine, if we have any?"

It's not anything she expects Avery to solve. The simple fact Avery isn't gone feels like a lot, these days.

"Probably," she answers (though something about leaving that earlier topic there irks her a little), then starts looking around for where she set the bottle. "If not, it's not like there isn't a bloody tavern a minute's walk that way."

There is a vague handwave off to the right somewhere.

"I don't want people tonight," Cosima says, which she probably wouldn't have a few drinks earlier in the evening. Then, suddenly realizing how that sounds: "I mean, stranger people, I'm glad you're here."

"Um..." If it wasn't clear already just from being around her, this face is a pretty good indicator that Avery is not used to being that person for anybody. It's- It's not a bad feeling, I guess?? But she's really not sure what to do with it, and is very thankful when she spots the wine bottle and has an excuse to turn her attention to something else as she grabs it and splits the little that's left between them.

"Suppose this'll have to do then."

"That or a raid on the kitchens that you'll remain totally ignorant and innocent of," Cosima says, pseudo-chipper. "Thanks."

She takes a sip, then says, "I always feel like I'm talking about myself. I just hope you know - I don't ask about personal stuff because it seems like you'd be uncomfortable, not because I don't care. And now..." She'd been about to say now that Ruby's gone, but plows through, "now it's just us, I just wanted to say. That."

It's genuine enough, but Cosima's also found herself in a bit of a conversational cul-de-sac. She takes a slightly longer drink.

Oh, good. A statement that gives her an excuse to make a lineface. Just what the doctor ordered!

But as Cosima continues, Avery just shrugs a little and shifts in her seat kind of awkwardly. "You can ask me things if you want. It just feels a bit weird, doesn't it? And it's not as if any of my story's going to be exciting or nothing."

"You don't have to entertain me," Cosima says, with a wry look. "It's just, you know. We're friends. Friends care how things are going for each other."

Her tone isn't judgmental. She's known Avery a while now, and isn't on a mission to change her. But Cosima also knows too well that he friendships in Thedas have a way of ending without warning for one reason or another, and she doesn't want everything to remain unsaid.

"I guess..."

SHE DOES NOT HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH THIS, COSIMA, JUST SPELL THINGS OUT, PLEASE. MAKE THIS EASY FOR HER.

"Is there something you want to know?"

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."

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

She laughs, despite herself.

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

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."

"Run an..."

To be honest, Jamie hasn't been thinking about the plans that Ruby originally put into place. It's been hard enough to deal with her having vanished as it is, and it's easier to assume with her being gone the idea of taking over the tavern's gone as well. So the possibility that it's not hasn't really crossed his mind, and as a result, he winds up giving Cosima a somewhat baffled look.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Uhhh, I've run an army base full of assholes, but not a bar. Close enough, though, right?" Making jokes is always better than addressing the pain of someone awesome gone missing. But the answer's still an unfortunate no. "Dude, she's talking about how Ruby wanted to do some kind of Rifter-eatery. Rifteatery. Rifter bar. Chez Rifter." With a confirming look to Cosima. "Right? Cuz, I mean, all that brewing stuff is still there."

"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.

"That's it, yeah." Cosima smiles. "The rifter bar, where everyone knows your name and no one knows your pop culture references."

She worries her lower lip, though, as she thinks through the dispiriting lack of food service experience between the three of them.

"I mean ... maybe it's too much. It was Ruby's baby, really. But I thought working on it might be, I don't know. Sort of a tribute or -- a way she can leave a mark here. She was always trying to help me feel more welcome, I thought it might be a good way to pay it forward."

Now it seems maybe a little over-ambitious. She's really got nothing except the ability to theoretically take over making moonshine, which she understands the theory behind, but the closest she's ever gotten was the time she dated a girl who colonized three-fourths of the fridge for her home brewing projects.

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.

"Oh!"

That actually makes sense, and apart from the fact that apparently they don't really have any real experience in how to run a bar, it's not such a bad idea. Ruby helped a lot of people, and if there's a way to pay her back for that, then maybe they should - even if she's not here to see them go through with it.

He's not all that worried after that lack of experience, though. He's learned how to do quite a few things over the past few years - things that he'd never imagined were possible. If he can do that, they can do this, and it's only a few seconds before he gives a dismissive snort.

"Och, look, how hard can it be? If we can figure out how to make the drinks, I reckon we can figure out how to sell them. We've all been to taverns or the like, aye? We can use what we've picked up from being there and use that as a place to start."

The tavern. It was a great place to find this giant of a man. He loved a good drink and the company of others. So of course when he saw the young woman, he immediately smiled and went over to her. With a cup of wine in offer and a smile in greeting, he really looked like something of a jolly giant at least. Hopefully that made up for any sort of intimidation his size might or might not cause.

"Hello! Will you have a drink with me, my friend? I always enjoy the company and wine always tastes best when consumed with others at your side."

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Page 1 of 7

You're easier to love from afar (open)

No, this is the happy kind of drinking (closed to Avery)

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Barracks

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Tavern