faderift | [OPEN] i will be your true companion

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[OPEN] i will be your true companion

WHO: Fern + various starters, and OPEN
WHAT: Life keeps going, even when you lose someone you care about.
WHEN: Early through mid-January.
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: None currently, will update as necessary.

I. HERB GARDEN (OPEN)

This was not how Fern had ever hoped to take on the mantle of Head Gardener--but with Sina gone and no one else in the base operations project possessing the same skill set, she steps into the role without complaint. Besides, some part of her cherishes the opportunity to familiarize herself with what would have been Sina's old routine.

She's bundled up against the cold one early morning, eyes still a little heavy from recent sleep and her expression tired and neutral, and is at work clearing out some of the remaining bits of dead brush that weren't gathered before the snow and ice storm arrived. Some of the brush is set aside to be used for kindling or mulch later.

It's simple work, tedious, but it helps to keep the lingering grief at bay.

II. BELETH & SORREL

Fern is cautious to approach them at first, even with Sina's promise in the back of her mind. The burial and funeral are over, and it would of course make sense for the two of them to put their own families and the needs of their clan ahead of some silly farm girl who may not realize she's overstepping their boundaries.

Eventually, she summons up her courage and seeks them out in the garden... waiting for the right time, of course, so as to not interrupt them in the middle of a private conversation.

She clears her throat and peers into their peripheral vision, hoping to catch Beleth's eye, or Sorrel's. "Um," she starts gracefully, "hello. I don't... know if you remember me--"

Sorrel surely does. Beleth may not.

III. MESS HALL (NELL)

It has been a bit easier for Fern to focus on her spellcasting since returning from the Plains--a bit, at any rate. Gaining closure in one respect doesn't mean she has a solution to her other most recent problem, namely Finch's arrival and all that that entails. Still, she's desperately afraid of disappointing Nell, and so perhaps tries too hard to focus on the lessons as they are described to her. Too much concentration means burnout, which means more mistakes.

She's trying not to dwell on them while they sit in the mess hall together eating lunch, but it's difficult not to get discouraged. And in the back of her mind, she's toying with another thought, one that Anders brought up to her when he reached out to her with a message the other evening.

In spite of whatever else it is they're discussing, when there's a pause, Fern looks across the table at Nell and asks, "Do you know Anders very well?"

IV. ELVEN ARTIFACTS OFFICE (PEL)

It's a bit of an adventure for Fern to find her way to the Elven Artifacts research offices, just because she spends very little of her day in this part of the Gallows--but find it she does. After a moment spent straightening out her shirt and tucking some loose strands of hair behind her ears, she knocks on the door and waits.

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"Oh, thanks." She smiles a bit ruefully. "When I first came to Thedas, I almost ran afoul of rashvine before a kind soul saved me from myself." Gloves are important. (And if she tends to wear them when she's running errands in Kirkwall ... well, no less important, even if the danger isn't rashvine.)

"I'm Cosima," she adds, "sorry. I didn't mean to bother if you meant to be alone, I just thought the work would go quicker with two of us and I like keeping busy."

"No, it's all right," Fern reassures her hastily; unexpectedly, the idea of being alone again is just too much to bear. Trying hard not to appear too desperate for a bit of company, she smiles and gestures back at the store room. "I'll go grab a pair and be right back."

It doesn't take very long; Sina kept everything neatly organized, and Fern is trying her very best to maintain that order. When she comes back out and offers the gloves to Cosima, she adds, "I hope they're the right size."

"Thanks," she says, taking the gloves. "They look like they should work. I could go back to my room and get my own pair, but to be honest they're more for cold than for gardening. I'd been hoping that leaving Skyhold meant escaping the snow, but no such luck."

"Well it's not as cold as winters in Ferelden, at least. Dunno if you've been yet," she adds, smiling a little, "but it's frigid there, most winters. I'm from right outside Denerim, you see, I remember seeing snowdrifts that were taller than my head when I was little." Littler than she is now, at any rate.

Then, recalling her manners, her eyes widen. "Oh, I'm so sorry--I'm Fern." She holds out a gloved hand for Cosima to shake. "I'm--" A pause, recalling her amended role, and her expression falls some. "I'm the new head gardener, now that Sina is..."

She trails off into silence. Well. That was kind of a buzzkill, wasn't it.

"Oh -- hey. I'm sorry." Cosima squeezes Fern's hand, then lets go, sitting back on her heels. "I only knew Sina a very little, but she seemed like a great person. I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to know her better."

She's not sure if it's better to talk about or worse, but either way her condolences are genuine.

The little squeeze to Fern's hand is appreciated. Fern smiles a little, though the expression is small, understandably sad. A little timidly, she admits, "I... didn't know her for very long, either. It was--" a moment's hesitation, and she considers Cosima in a glance, before deciding to just admit it, it seems so many others already know, "--it was complicated, we had, um... there was something."

Well that certainly clears things up, doesn't it, Fern?

"Yeah?" Cosima's gentle, though not ginger; sympathetic, but clearly unafraid Fern will break too easily if pressed. "You want to talk about it at all? I know we just met, but I promise I'm a good listener."

The offer is light, easy to turn down without offense, but sincerely meant all the same.

It's nice, Fern decides, to be treated gently, but not like she's made of glass.

"Yeah," she starts, and doesn't realize she's begun to smile a little until she discovers some of the heaviness has lifted from her heart. Maybe it's reckless to trust a stranger in such a way, but there's something in Cosima's demeanour that makes her believe that yes, she is a good listener.

She takes a moment, trying to gather her words, then looks up to Cosima again with an unexpected earnestness in her eyes. "Have you ever met someone before in your life, just a new friend, and liked them very much just... right away?"

"Oh yeah, for sure," she says, with a little smile. "It feels special, right? Like you recognize them, almost, even though you've only just met. I've had that a couple of times."

She thinks, with a small pang, of meeting Dephine, but pushes that thought away as not helpful.

"It's rare, but I think that makes it even more important."

Nervously, Fern threads another lock of hair behind her ear and admits quietly, "That's--what it felt like. When I met Sina, for the first time."

After a pause, in which she looks up to Cosima's face again, worried about seeing judgment there, she insists, "I know we barely had the chance to know each other longer than... than just a few months. And she was married," this added with a pang of guilt she can't hide or deny, "and I'm still engaged, but... But I think if things had been different, maybe if we'd had a chance, or different choices, we could've.."

There she trails off again and wrings her fingers together. She bites her lower lip. "I sound silly, don't I."

Any judgment she might worry about is entirely absent; Cosima's look is all quiet sympathy. "Definitely not. I think a lot of us have those kind of things in life, where you can see a flash of a might-have-been. I've definitely had one, anyway. And that's tough, even when you're not mourning them on top of it."

Cosima considers reaching out to her, but decides against. Instead, she just says, "Whatever you felt... that's yours now. It isn't silly or wrong or anything at all except a feeling you had, and can remember sometimes. And it can have something to do with your engagement or not. That's up to you to decide now."

This is probably the most candidly she's ever spoken about Finch with anyone here, and it's a bit embarrassing to realize that it's happening with a relative stranger. But there is just something about Cosima that makes Fern feel--safe. Safe to share a secret with her, even one she's truly ashamed of.

"Finch--that's... that's my fiancé's name, he's..." A pause, and a guilty look off to the side. "He's nice. He didn't do anything wrong. But he came here to the Inquisition looking for me, and I haven't told him anything yet."

Another pause. She winces. "I need to soon though."

"Look, I don't know you well and I don't know Finch at all. But... I will say, there are a lot of people who are perfectly nice, even people I care about deeply, that I wouldn't marry. I know there can be a lot of factors involved, but I think when possible, marriage should be a thing you enthusiastically say yes to, not just something you can't think of a reason not to do."

She considers Fern, then adds mildly, "If you need more time to think about it, I think 'We're in the middle of trying to keep the world from ending' is a legitimate reason."

"...marriage should be a thing you enthusiastically say yes to, not just something you can't think of a reason not to do."

...well when she puts it like that, it all seems like such a simple proposition, doesn't it? Fern looks at Cosima as though she's just handed her the secret to solving all her problems on a silver platter. Not--the latter part, though that's of course a valid reason to turn Finch down. It seems like the former should have occurred to her before now; why hadn't it?

"Thank you, Cosima," she says quietly but earnestly, smiling a little.

Cosima smiles back, muted but warm. "My pleasure. And hey, if you ever need to commiserate over either a breakup or a bad timing, missed connection kind of deal, I've definitely got a few stories I will happily share. My pre-Thedas dating history was needlessly dramatic, really."

Not that it was exactly Cosima's fault. Mostly.

Who doesn't love the chance at gossip? Maybe that's the world's great unifier. Fern brightens a bit more, her little smile widening, and she giggles.

"We don't really... do 'dating'?" The word voiced almost as a question, as though it still is a bit of a foreign concept to her. She gestures a little with her hands. "It sounds so very romantic, though. Much more romantic than, 'Well Fern, we've found you a husband, he's the farmboy from across the pasture who dipped your pigtails in ink when you were ten.'" This said a bit sulkily. ...then somewhat guiltily, "He's nice, now, just." Another vague gesture. You know.

Cosima grins a bit at that. "That still exists where I'm from, though usually more in subtle pressure than parents actually making the choice. But yeah, 'that's how he shows he likes you' -- still a thing."

Sorry, Finch.

"Most people where I'm from, though, it's expected you'll pick your partner for yourself. Dating is when you spend time together to see if you're compatible, if you think you want to commit long term. I mean, in theory. My, uh, last girlfriend before I came to Thedas turned out to be a spy who was trying to monitor me, so. That... didn't go great."

"A spy?!" Fern exclaims, and looks as though she's on the cusp of genuine fright on Cosima's behalf. (Evidently, romantic Orlesian tales of bards falling for their marks have never sat well with her.) One hand seizes in the front of her own tunic, her eyes very wide. "That sounds awful! But you got away from her, didn't you? She's," and she glances around, suddenly seeming worried, "she didn't come through a rift, too, did she?"

"She did, actually, but she's been gone more than a year now. She was only in Thedas a few weeks before she vanished." Cosima looks more rueful than unsettled to talk about it now. "When I confronted her, she told me that she hadn't planned to fall for me, that she was really on my side. I knew believing her was probably dumb, but I wanted to, you know? She was... I felt like we had a connection, and I didn't want to believe someone could fake that so completely, I think."

"She was... I felt like we had a connection, and I didn't want to believe someone could fake that so completely, I think."

"Was she?" Fern asks then, looking up to Cosima with very wide, worried eyes. She bites her lower lip, then ventures, "Faking it, I mean." She looks very much like she hopes, desperately, that the spy Cosima had fallen for hadn't used her cruelly, that those moments of instantaneous connection can result in something real, ultimately.

(After all, she experienced it once before... and is starting to suspect she's experiencing it a second time.)

Cosima pauses, really considering the question. "I don't think so," she says finally. "But I didn't really get a chance to find out. I'm here, and she hasn't been for a long time. And now I'm with someone... I was going to say less complicated, but that's probably not really true. Let's go with someone whose feelings I'm sure about, at least. But I still think about the woman from home, sometimes. It's not the sort of thing you just forget, you know? Even if you move on."

She does know. Fern can't ever imagine forgetting about Sina, or wanting to forget about Sina, who had taught her so much about herself and introduced her to a portion of her heritage she'd always believed to be long out of reach. Even knowing her just for a little while, that time was precious, and can never be replaced.

"I know what you mean," she says in a quiet but earnest voice.

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[OPEN] i will be your true companion

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