faderift | The rose I sickened with a scarlet fever [Open]

Cosima finds it a bit ironic, as the persistent good mood begins to ebb, that she's facing a choice in which treating one illness is making the other notably worse. Granted, it's best that she finally got some sleep -- she has enough wherewithal to remember the adverse health effects sleep deprivation can cause -- but the snapback isn't at all pleasant.

(The occasional crackle of lightning between her fingers is, while it lasts, concerning but maybe less concerning than the blue tinge to her skin? Equally concerning. Both things are concerning.)

Cosima still finds herself making notes about onion rings sometimes, but she feels poorly enough she can keep herself away from the kitchen. She's been following what she can about the disease on the crystals, but she hasn't heard from Thranduil in ages, and has to assume he's affected. She wants something to do, but doesn't feel well enough to insist anyone give her work. So she tracks her own symptoms as best she can and shows up when requested for research or treatment attempts. And she tries not to think too hard about where all this is going.

From her perspective, it's much the same as the latter half of phase two. The unpredictable electricity powers have faded, which she feels is definitely for the best, but she's still feverish and still tinged blue.

But for those who do actually see her, her demeanor has shifted. She's honed to a point, focused and buried in her notes. Much of it has to do with rest and sleep, some of it has to do with her sweat, some with rumors she's encountered. (Cosima hasn't drunk any blood herself, so far, but she did lightly slice her arm to see the color and subsequently bandaged the small cut, likely visible since she's alternates too warm and too cold and is layering and unlayering often.)

It's not the mania of her snack obsession, but it a noticeable change, assuming one maintains the memories for a frame of reference.

She's made it to her office, which isn't far from her sleeping quarters, and the prospect of a thing she can actually do has given her a bit of a push back toward energy, if not exactly back toward health as such. She had a few lyrium samples she'd been working with before all this began, and between her and Anders they'll have both an affected blood sample and a control. She's already setting up her notes, precise columns, when he arrives.

He's there a short time later, all of his hair tied back in a messy ponytail, a couple of vials of blood in his hand which might explain some of the nerves he's feeling.

"First and foremost, let me know if you get too tired and need a break. This is important, but your health is important too. Secondly," he holds up the vials before placing them down, "mine, since it's unaffected and I have no idea what... regular... blood would look like, and Rey's."

The first is the red he's used to, the latter is purplish.

"You're in command here, so tell me what will help and you'll have it."

"I promise I'm not going to run off and make French fries." It's a joke, albeit a quiet one. Still, she flashes a sparse smile. "As long as you're actually sleeping sometimes too, and not being a giant hypocrite like half the doctors I knew at home."

She doesn't actually expect him to answer that, it's just a point worth making.

"Okay, I've got lyrium samples already, because I was working on them with the red lyrium project before the sickness derailed everything. So we should prep the blood slides. If anything happens with Rey's sample, we can use mine as a backup." She's focused, and it seems to ground her, for all she's been wrung out by the experience thus far.

"Feasgar math, Cosima."

Quietly, as she steps back into her quarters. It had seemed a good offer to make, handing her room over to Cosima - less disturbance for any sharing Cosima's residence, a way to check in vaguely more discretely, even if she doesn't end up capable of staying in the one place for very long. It's worth the chance, at least, that Cosima will be able to secure some rest.

That said, she's partway expecting Cosima to be sitting at the desk anyway, as she sets down a tray, unloading the contents - a jug of water, a teapot, and a small bunch of flowers, albeit with the stems a little bent. If she's somewhere else - Maker forbid, perhaps even resting on the bed - Herian will be pleasantly surprised.

"Crocus and snowdrops bloom even through the remaining snow." It seems a slightly foolish gesture, now, bringing flowers, and she lists forward to press a kiss to Cosima's temple.

"Nate would hunt me down if I wasn't sleeping."

He's lucky he has Nate for many reasons, but sleep is definitely one of them. He wouldn't be sleeping if not for his husband. He gives her a faint smile that's tinged with worry and stress.

"Let's mount the blood." He offers Rey's sample to her, taking his own and carefully putting it on a slide, copying what she does. "I'm operating on the assumption that normally her blood would be similar to mine. I haven't felt anything strangely unfamiliar in healing any Rifters before, you included, so I'm assuming human norms. I'm not certain that's the best assumption to make, but I don't know how else to approach it."

"Yeah, since I don't know of any unaffected Rifters at this point, I think we're going to have to take a leap on the baseline. But from everything I've seen so far, I think that's a safe assumption to make."

She actually still has the latex gloves she arrived wearing -- she's preserved them mainly through not using them, but this seems like a decent time to pull them on. As she gets to work setting up the slides, she ask, "Depending on what this yields, it might make sense to get a sample from a templar too, if we can? From what I hear, it seems like their symptoms are presenting a little differently."

She lost a week to the first flush of her illness, but she's been paying attention since.

"Hey." She's, as expected, at the desk, though she's lost the mania of the disease's first phase. Still a bit warm when Herian kisses her, and still more than a bit blue, but able to smile a little even so. "They're gorgeous -- thanks. I could use something else to look at." She touches a finger lightly to a snowdrop petal.

"I did lay down a bit, earlier," she adds, before Herian can ask. "Sleeping's not easy, but I'm trying to at least rest when I can."

From under the desk comes a quiet whuff, and the thump of Franklin’s tail against the floor. Herian doesn’t look for him, but smiles a little. “I brought something up. Milk with lavender and a little vanilla.”

It’s worrying to see Cosima like this. Tired she could cope with, but the blue tinge is such a constant, unending reminder that things aren’t okay, that something is amiss that she’s no idea how to fix. What she can do, though, is draw ice magic to her fingertips, and slowly trail her fingers down the back of Cosima’s neck. “Does that help?”

Rey makes it to Cosima's workspace after resting in the Infirmary for the better part of a day. She's not really recovering from her blood loss, but she's restless despite it, feeling the need to do something. She isn't much help in the infirmary, so she decides Cosima is her best bet of finding something to do to help. At this point she'd probably help design and assemble a steam-powered MRI if it would help them figure out what's making all the Rifters so sick.

She arrives at Cosima's door still wrapped in the blanket Anders gave her, with Padawan solidly pressed to her side, the mabari barely leaving her since the illness took it's turn.

"You haven't found anything new, have you?"

Cosima closes her eyes with a little sigh, leaning back into Herian's touch. "Yeah, that's nice." Herian can feel the tension in her neck and shoulders, in contrast to her somewhat relaxed demeanor. It's not an act, exactly, but it is an effort.

After a moment, she says, "I wanted to apologize. About earlier."

Cosima's been in and out of the infirmary. Rationally, she knows it's probably better to stay there, but...

...well, she supposes no one can react totally rationally to the prospect of their own imminent death. And the infirmary doesn't have a puppy to cuddle.

"Hey," she says, looking up when Rey arrives. She'd been looking over notes, yet again. "A little, but nothing applicable yet. I heard I've got you to thank for the blood sample, though."

"You did nothing to be apologised for."

Which doesn't mean it wasn't a little difficult, and she sets both her hands on Cosima's shoulders, gently starting to press in with her fingers, a slightly cautious massage with the cool touch, before stopping. "Would you like a massage?"

Cautious only because she doesn't to overstep with how Cosima's feeling, especially when she feels so tense.

And, again: "I did not... act as well as I might have."

Edited (words) 2018-02-07 02:03 (UTC)

"I've actually got a runner bringing up blood from our Templar volunteer now, so by the time we're looking at these, it should be here."

The gloves get a curious look, but he'll have to ask her about why she's protecting her hands later. They have illness and cures on the slate; it's not time to satisfy personal curiousity.

"Simon's apparently being helpful." His voice is wry. A few years too late, but of course the Templars get helpful when it's in their own self-interest... and he cuts off that path of thought. It isn't going to help. "Prior to this illness, going back to Rifter blood, I've treated a few of you. Including you. I think I would have noticed if your blood was this different, and I've seen some bleed. After this, when everyone's gone back to normal, I may want to see each Rifter for a very thorough note-taking session."

It's optimistic to speak of 'after this,' but he's determined it'll be the case. There's a knock on the door as the runner slips in, dropping off the last vial.

"I know what blood looks like at home, so if your blood looks normal to me, I think we can take that as 'good enough' confirmation as a baseline." She glances up at the runner, but then turns her attention back to her slides. Once everything is prepped, she goes to the microscope. "We were working on doing some observations of people with anchor shards for the Rifts and Veil project before all this, but it might be worthwhile to establish some baseline health stats for Rifters for health reasons too."

She starts with the slide of his blood first. "OK, your blood looks pretty much like I expect, so at least there's that." Small favors. "Do you want to come look at it before I switch out the slides?" If she gets sicker, it'll be better to have someone capable of following up who saw this first set of data, she thinks, but doesn't say; she and Anders are both aware enough that she might be running out of time without her saying so.

"I was a jerk," she says, "but I will totally take a massage from you anyway if the offer stands. I know I wasn't myself, but it still sucks," Cosima adds, softer, a moment later. "I didn't mean to make you feel ignored."

"Yes, please." He's already losing patients in Darktown; he doesn't need to lose more here in the Gallows so he won't. He's decided. As if his decision has anything to do with it.

Anders leans forward and is instantly fascinated. Hundreds of little circles are scooting around; he's seeing things that are usually in him. "Maker. That's... blood. I don't know what I was expecting," he says, amused, as he straightens, "but I can't say it was that. Maybe we can tell Thedas that as mages already have circles in their veins we don't need to also be in Circles."

There's a beat. "Are those... cells, too? Different types of them from the plants, obviously." As he asks he grabs the Templar blood and starts repeating her earlier motions to prepare that one too. It only makes sense for her to get first look at everything since she's the one who knows what they're looking at.

"Yeah. You'd get a better view if I had a good way to stain the sample, but the little circles you noticed are red blood cells. The fluid they're in is called plasma; it's mostly water, but it's also got some sugars and proteins in it. Someday I'll have to explain transfusions and blood types to you, but I don't think it's gonna be super helpful today."

Even if a transfusion might help, they don't have the technology to do it. She might as well suggest a full-body CAT scan for all the good it would do.

"Blood's got what we call white blood cells too. There are fewer of them and they're bigger than the red blood cells. They're a big part of the way the body fights off disease, so we might get a look at them in the other samples." She takes Rey's sample and switches it out.

"...huh. That's... interesting."

"You see something?" There's hope in his voice despite his efforts to sound detached. "Is it something you've seen before? Or know of? Or..."

If working with blood has actually gotten them somewhere he very well could be thanking the Maker later, and all the stress of talking on the network about blood would have been worth it.

"Anything, really. Squares? Triangles?"

"There's definitely lyrium in this sample, which is probably why it looks blue," she says, deliberate, without looking up from the microscope. "But it isn't... ugh, for lack of a better word, it's not healthy lyrium. It's all twisted up and breaking down." She peers closer. "I'm still looking, but there's not obvious evidence of the blood cells becoming lyrium cells, though. Nothing, like, halfway in-between. It's blood cells and lyrium."

She should let him take a look, certainly, but she's still trying to parse all the information she's getting. She supposes, in the absence of stains, she should be grateful for lyrium's vibrant color, which at least makes it easy to spot.

“Come sit on the bed, then.”

She kisses Cosima’s neck, just below her jaw, and stays close for a couple of moments. “I adore you. It was hard, but I understand.”

"So their blood is still fine?"

That may be the best news they've had so far. It's not them, it's the lyrium in their blood being taken out. How or why Rifters have lyrium in their blood is a mystery still, but they've got something now.

"And the lyrium is being destroyed. So the Templars are genuinely having withdrawls because they're not getting its full effects." Like putting in only part of an elfroot leaf rather than the five a potion calls for. "We have to stop whatever is warping the lyrium. ...And by extension, perhaps, warping magic considering the effects healing has."

As she gets up, she turns to kiss Herian properly. (The fleeting thought -- what if this is contagious after all -- is quickly dismissed. She's already sleeping in Herian's bed half the time; a little affection won't make it worse.)

"You're amazing," she says, quietly. "And very, very patient. I got so lucky with you."

The odds of them even meeting were so overwhelmingly small that everything since seems like a windfall sometimes. If Cosima believed in miracles, it could almost be that.

"I mean, the blood is fine in the sense that the actual blood cells don't seem damaged, yeah, though my understanding is that having lyrium in your blood when you haven't taken any lyrium is still concerning..." She trails off. "What the hell is that, though?" she asks, mainly rhetorically.

"Come here, come look at this." She doubts he'll be able to shed any real light on what she's seeing, but at least having a second person describe it might help her confirm what she thinks she's observed.

"Um," he says even before he's in position. If she doesn't know, he's really unlikely to know, but Anders shifts over and leans in to look anyway. There's the blood again, there's the mangled lyrium cells along with a few whole ones, and there's something new.

"Um," he says again, and then it moves. It goes up to one of the lyrium cells, and his eyebrows climb. "It's... Maker, is it attacking? Some sort of... shark in the blood, swimming along and eating the lyrium? Cosima?"

Anders straightens back up, looking at her. "Does that, does your world have that?"

Herian does not, as a rule, blush. It's not really a thing. At some point in her life she decided blushing was not knightly, and thus not a behaviour she would indulge. (Or maybe it's just very hard to make happen, although the other option could well be what can be heard on the rumour mill.) In this instance, however, it is possible that her cheeks go very slightly pink, as she trips over navigating her words.

"I'm— I, um." I am not worthy of such praise, she means to say, put instead rubs her knuckles against her jaw briefly, wrangles an unbidden smile, and gestures slightly awkwardly towards the bed, as if it were possible Cosima were unfamiliar with its location.

"I am also extremely fortunate," she finally manages, after clearing her throat. Smooth recovery.

There's a solid knocking on the door of Cosima's office, the clinking of glass, and the call of a hoarse but intent voice from outside.

"Anders? Cosima?"

Anders gets the door promptly and holds it open for Nari, giving her a curious look.

"We're in here, yes. What is it, Nari?"

Opening the door reveals a ragged but intent looking Nari with a stoppered glass bottle in each hand. One is full of chipped lyrium crystals and the other contains what looks like a concentrated viscous lyrium potion, both of which she holds out towards Anders.

“New shipment came in, and when I went to fetch it, most all of it was like this,” she says, indicating the liquid. “Only one box survived, and no reason I could see for either the melt or the lack of it. I thought the two of you might want to take a look.”

Rey smiles faintly, leaning against the doorframe and holding up her left arm which no longer bears the wound thanks to Anders's healing.

"Probably not my finest moment, but I needed to do something, and I know when a machine is broken, you look under the cover." Once she'd gotten the thought of blue blood in her head, after Solas had made his post, she couldn't get it out again. She'd been determined to do something useful, to the point of personal injury. It doesn't strike her as odd that she did it, but it probably should.

Cosima kisses her cheek, lightly, before moving to lie on her stomach on the bed. "I really thought I might never see you again, after you left Skyhold. So really, we got lucky twice over. And we've had all this, since you came back." They don't really talk about what they are to each other much -- Herian's temperament doesn't allow for it, and Cosima respects that -- but the days do have a bit of a now or never feeling to them that gives Cosima a small shove toward speaking her thought. "I'm really glad I haven't had to go through this without you."

Edited 2018-02-11 00:36 (UTC)

"Yes and no. Cells or small multi-cellular creatures that attack other cells? Yeah, that's the reason for a lot of diseases. But that particular creature, no. I've never seen anything like that before. And it seems to be eating the lyrium, and since my world doesn't have lyrium, it couldn't have adapted in my world."

She has a thought, and reaches for paper and ink. "I don't know... it's like it's infecting the lyrium. But that's... you can't infect an element or a mineral." She jots something down aand then moves back to the microscope. "The, um. I'll call them lyriophages for now, I guess. Whatever they're doing to the lyrium could be having effects on the host's bloodstream that explains some or all of the symptoms. But I don't know how the lyrium got in the Rifters in the first place."

Edited 2018-02-11 00:43 (UTC)

"I appreciate the metaphor, even if I'm not a mechanic. I've looked at my own blood before, though where I'm from and probably where you're from there are less messy ways of getting a sample." She tilts her head. "You want to come in for a minute? I'm mainly just keeping myself busy, I wouldn't mind some company."

"Shit." Cosima comes over. "If you can keep the intact box away from the rest, and away from the rifters and templars for now... probably not a bad idea, though I don't know if it'll be enough to help. May I?" She reaches for the vial with the liquid, though doesn't take it without permission.

Herian's brow flickers a little. She pours a cup of the milk and lavender infusion, lightly steaming, and sets it on the bedside table within Cosima's reach, silent for a few moments. Franklin, with all the movement, ambles from his place under the desk to flop in his basket in the corner - a little further away, but keeping an eye on both of his humans, apparently.

"You will survive this," Herian says, softly. "Pray don't— do not imagine that there is finality in this sickness. You will persevere. I have faith in that."

She prays, lights candles in chapel, works with a sort of desperation even though the things that she can help with cannot directly help Cosima, because she doesn't know how else to address it. "You are—" Herian stops, her jaw working for a moment as she sits on the side of the bed next to Cosima, trailing a hand down her back. It takes her a moment longer to resume speaking, after swallowing uncomfortably. "You are the most important person in this world to be, Cosima. I will not see our time together cut short, when we have been so lucky as to find one another."

The vial is easily relinquished--after all, she'd come to deliver them to the pair.

"I'll see what I can do when I head back," Nari says, "Cleanup's already started down there. If you think you might want more of that stuff," she jerks her head towards the vial now in Cosima's hand, "I'll try to get ahold of it before it all gets disposed of."

Cosima looks back over her shoulder, without getting up. "Hey. I'm not saying goodbye just now, promise. I'm going to do whatever I can to help them figure this out, as long as I'm up to it." She shifts enough she can reach back and take Herian's hand. "I'm not going to leave you if I have anything to say about it."

She can't help thinking, though, that she'd only just stopped thinking about Thedas as stolen time. It hardly seems fair, that they should have an answer for her chronic condition, only for something else to threaten to cut her life short. (Of course, she knows better than to think illness is anything to do with fairness, at least in her head.)

"I just don't feel great, don't let me scare you."

A nod, and Herian gently squeezes Cosima's hand, leaning forward so she's bracing herself over Cosima a little, not resting her weight on her. She presses a kiss to Cosima's shoulder, and the back of her neck. "Good. I can't begin to fathom it."

Silence hangs in the air a moment, a kind of tension pulling at the space between words. Bringing words together in ways that have meaning and are not trite or sound insincere for how often they have been recycled by others is hard. Words that are true and express honestly are hard to work out. Some things can be laid out more plainly.

"I love you."

She tries to shift, if Herian lets her, enough so she can look at her properly. "I love you too. We're gonna make it through this, okay?" Whether or not she feels properly confident... it seems like the promise to make, in the face of that declaration. Despite everything, Cosima glows with it, a little. She'd thought so, but hearing it said is something else.

Adjusting to accomodate the movement, Herian feels—

more exposed to what she's just managed to say, with Cosima looking at her. It's not bad, far from it, but it is the first time she's made herself say it aloud, lain it out for acknowledgement and possibly disaster. (She is glad this hasn't been a disaster.)

"We shall." And a bit of a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, which she does nothing to correct. The smile isn't the half of it, really, when she feels all light. Hearing it is something else. Saying it is something else. She bites her lip, and leans forward to kiss her again.

"I did promise you a massage," she murmurs, and its kind of a reminder for both of them, though she's happy to keep kissing Cosima a few moments more.

"Lyro... forgive me, but I'm tired and blood sharks seems far more amusing than it has any right to seem so I think I'm going to keep calling them that." He appreciates her science and knowledge immensely, but he's had exhaustion giggles threaten him a couple of times during this and he wants to tell Nate about blood sharks while laughing himself to sleep tonight.

"More seriously... I don't know. Could you have gotten it by being exposed to the Fade? When you crossed through it? Or... Um." There's a knock at the door, and Nari's there.

"I've still no idea about how you have lyrium in your veins," he says after, "but let's look at this as we ponder?"

He considers the offer and nods.

"Please, just in case? There's no telling, currently, what we might need and it's better to have it in case than not. And thank you fur this. I know you've your hands full with a great many things on top of this."

He takes the vial with crystals, holding it a bit away from Cosima as an extra tiny precaution after her suggestion.

"You did," Cosima says, softening a bit and laying down again after one more kiss. "Can you do that ice thing with your fingers again? That was great, actually."

Under other circumstances, Cosima might be inclined to tease and fondly press at the revelation. But she's tired, and she's worried, and she knows Herian is worried. Maybe a few quiet moments together are best, here and now.

"Yeah, agreed; especially if I'm right about what this is doing to the lyrium, it's not going to be useful except for research, but if you can save any, it might help us." She gives Nari a small, tired smile. "Thanks so much for this, really."

With a quiet chuckle, Herian leans her forward on her elbow, holding her hand where Cosima can see it laying down. For a moment, heat glows under her fingertips, before a very light buzz of lightning flares across them, and then a very light frost crawls over them.

"I can do many things," she advises, momentarily teasing, heavily bordering on the lands of flirtatious, before she leans back and kisses Cosima's shoulder. "But I will stick to the 'ice thing'."

She feels simultaneously the odd adrenaline rush that comes with important words being spoken, with wondrous news being delivered back to her, the entirely unknightly flurry of butterflies, all mixed in with the worry and trepidation that this fever has brought on. They are not out of the woods - they are not safe, not yet, but in this moment she can try to help and make Cosima more comfortable, and that will do. Ice magic rises in her skin, and she slowly works her hands own Cosima's back.

"Sure. I was hoping you might need something built, but I'll settle for being company." Rey is used to being alone, but she doesn't particularly enjoy it. Laying on a cot in the Infirmary, even when people were bustling around, had felt very lonely.

She moves into the room, Padawan moving with her like a crutch, dropping down into the first chair she sees.

"I didn't realize needles were such a luxury until coming to this place. I suppose it makes sense, given the primitive way they manipulate metal."

"Oh man, tell me about it. Like, I was expecting to miss information technology and rapid messaging, but at this point I'd settle for a box of latex gloves and a few ballpoint pens." Cosima sits back in her chair a little. "It's funny, there's stuff they can do with magic that's incredible, but then there are things I take totally for granted that I end up having to explain."

"I lived rougher than those on Core planets, but even I had comforts I didn't realize could just... not exist in certain places," Rey replies, smiling a little as she settles her hand on Padawan's head.

"Private showers, for example. We had stalls lined up for sonics in the Niima outpost, but... they were private. It's so strange that here it's just accepted that groups of people bathe together."

The rose I sickened with a scarlet fever [Open]

Phase Two - specify early or late if you like

Phase Three

For Anders

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later on? I can happily change this up btw

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later on works for me!

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sometime after the blood sharks discovery (Phase 4?) (open to Anders)

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Sorry for the delay!

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np!

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