faderift | ( closed ) I see the world through a filter

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( closed ) I see the world through a filter

WHO: Cosima Niehaus, Sarah Manning, Sarah Manning’s migraine
WHAT: Cosima and Helena’s introduction in canon was a lot cuter than this
WHEN: mumbles vaguely
WHERE: a tavern, Lowtown
NOTES: Helena, so probably they’ll have to be added later eAe (Clone friends, if you’d prefer action over prose just reply with that and I’ll match format)

Sarah has managed to herd her to… somewhere. They left the castle on a boat to go to the Kirkwall, moved through crowded streets all stacked up higgledy piggledy, people rushing through on paths that they stick to as stubbornly as little ants. Scurrying, on and on.

Now they sit in a bar. The room is dingy, though it doesn’t occur to Helena to describe it in such terms. It seems nice. Sarah chose it, she is sure it’s nice. She has been told to sit and to wait, and to not get into trouble. Sarah had been particularly eager to make sure she understood the last part, and she is not causing problem, but people are shooting her looks anyway. People often shoot her looks, cross streets, pretend they don’t see her.

She enjoys the reaction, and when a man stares at her for too long she slams her hands down on the tabletop and hisses at him, like a cat. He jumps, clears his throat and stares into his beer. Good.

She’s still grinning as she uses a piece of metal she has twisted into a point (where did she even get it?) to start etching into the surface of the table, a messy looking smiley face, or the beginnings of it.

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Sarah is anxious. One: because she's already done this already, and two: because the last time she did it, the circumstances were hugely different. This time she's dragging a Helena who's still uncertain how she feels about other clones to meet a Cosima who barely likes Sarah at this point, much less Sarah's troubled twin. She gives a withering glance to Helena and her pointy metal, thinks about confiscating it, then decides that might make everything worse.

Okay. New plan. She stands from her seat at the table and places a hand on Helena's shoulder.

"Stay right here. Don't cause any trouble. I'm going out front to meet Cosima." She gives Helena a pointed look before heading for the door. "I mean it, Helena. I'll be right back."

Once she's outside, she runs a hand through her hair and then sticks both hands in the pockets of her jacket, slouching against the tavern wall and keeping an eye out for Cosima.

Cosima's hard to miss, for all her wardrobe is fairly native these days; there still aren't a lot of people with plastic-framed glasses and Doc Martens running around Kirkwall. (She does wear thin gloves, in an effort to minimize the amount of shit non-Inquisition natives give her day to day. It has mixed results.)

One thing Sarah doesn't have to worry about, though; for all they weren't as close yet when Cosima left as Sarah remembers, Cosima's obviously thrilled to see her now. Her face lights up when she catches sight of her, and Sarah is getting hugged shortly after Cosima makes it within arm's reach.

"Oh my god, I can't believe you're really here. I mean, I knew it, but seeing you, wow."

"God, Cos. Hi." Sarah's grinning as she returns the hug and gives Cosima a quick kiss on the side of the head. It feels like it's been forever since she's been able to see Cosima, not just a quick phone call but an actual face to face conversation.

She steps back and takes in Cosima's clothes. She's still smiling, but it's softer now as she looks for signs of illness. Two years, Cosima'd said she'd been here. "How are you doing?" She tries to ask in such a way that it's general, but it's still probably pretty obvious what she means.

"Good. I mean, not cured good, but under-control good." For what it's worth, Cosima looks well enough upon inspection. (She's privately glad Sarah arrived too late for the blood plague, though she'll probably hear about it soon enough if she hasn't already.) "I go in and get a magic fucking spell cast on me every couple of weeks, which shouldn't work but does somehow. Which is one of the reasons I've pitched in, they were healing me before I even agreed to help them."

She's not so naive as to think the Inquisition is helping rifters out of altruism, although several of the inividual healers might; still, it's more than anyone else in Thedas is offering.

"Are you okay? It's a lot, I know, it's so much."

Sarah's smile turns a little wry. Getting weird, experimental (in Sarah's opinion, at least) treatments in exchange for some work sounds like typical Cosima. But it's not like she can judge. (Well, she can, and will. But privately, for now. Sounds like Cosima didn't have much of a choice.)

"Yeah, I'm fine. Anything's better than the Sunless Void, or whatever it's called. It was a long few weeks." Not least because of Helena.

"Yeah, it sounds like it was rough even by arrival to Thedas' normal standards." Usually 'surrounded by demons' at a minimum. "At least we're not in Skyhold anymore. Kirkwall's not perfect but it's not an isolated mountain fortress, so it's got that going for it."

Small mercies.

"Is your hand alright? I know mine still aches on and off, but it seems like some people get it worse than others." Adding Sina to the list of topics that can wait for a little later on.

Sarah glances down at her hand. A lot of the rifters seem to wear gloves, but she hasn't bothered yet. "It hurts now and then, but we've had worse, yeah?"

A quick look over her shoulder to the tavern; it doesn't appear to be on fire yet, so that's good. "I know we've got a lot to catch each other up on. There's shit happening at home," as usual, "but Helena's inside waiting." She watches Cosima's face for a reaction.

Cosima's expression fades, a bit, into wary neutrality. "Probably best not to leave her unsupervised for very long, then," she says, fairly evenly. She's doing her best to trust Sarah on this, but it's hard for her to imagine what they must have gone through to get to this point. Helena is still Beth's unfinished business as much as anything else, for Cosima, and it's jarring for Sarah to sound even gruffly concerned about her.

On the other hand, Sarah's instinct for self-preservation isn't one Cosima generally questions. She's willing to try to catch up.

Yeah, Sarah expected this. It's not like she can blame Cosima for her reaction, either. "I know how weird this is," she says, like there aren't a thousand stranger things happening around them, "but it's not her fault—the way she is. She's trying to be good. She saved my life." It's practically impossible to summarize the change in Sarah and Helena's relationship, so Sarah just leaves it at that. "She won't hurt you."

"Or anyone else during the next hour or two, I hope," ruefully, but she still gestures at the door to the bar all the same. Her own reluctance aside, leaving Helena unsupervised any length of time also sounds like an equally bad idea. And if she saved Sarah's life, that earns her a little credit, at least.

Sarah laughs—more out of nervousness than because she thinks Cosima's quip is funny. She's taken away Helena's knife and crystal and more or less attempted to ground her for the time being, but as evidenced by the sharp piece of metal she's been playing with at the table, Helena has a way of finding weapons when she wants to. Sarah can only hope that Helena will, for once in her life, listen and not fuck shit up.

"She's over here," she says, leading Cosima into the tavern and towards the table where she left Helena and where Helena is hopefully still seated.

And she sure is still over there. It's more to do with being very focused on what she's etching into the table and the mercy of people in the tavern not having done anything to grab her attention, rather than because of Sarah's instructions. The smiley face she was carving before has evolved into and awkward family of smiley faces, some surrounded by petals. The are messy and childlike renderings, but Helena looks up as Sarah draws closer, as aware of her twin as she would be a brightening light.

She has one of the lambs with her. She does not know how to think of them, any more. A sister, not to be hurt. The same as her, no longer able to believe herself the original. If this lamb is a person, truly, then that means all of them were people that she killed. That is not necessarily so terrible in and of itself, but they were her sisters, Sarah said. Her family. It was more comfortable to believe they were some plague to be wiped out.

For a long moment she is frozen, bent over the table, looking like a feral creature as she looks between Sarah and Cosima, and Cosima's glasses.

"You did not say her eyes were broken." Defective clone? Lesser clone?

"Hey." Sarah places a hand flat on the table, not quite a slap, but close. Something loud and quick to get Helena's attention. "Be respectful."

She holds eye contact with Helena until she's sure she's gotten the message across, and that Helena isn't about to lash out. God, she feels more like a babysitter than anything, most times. But she needs this to go well. As well as it can go. If it doesn't, there could be long term consequences that she's not sure she's prepared to deal with.

"This is Cosima," she says, "one of our sisters. Our family." The word sisters is very subtly emphasized.

After the barest of hesitations, Cosima offers her hand. She's giving this an honest chance, and if it's more for Sarah's sake than Helena's... well, she assumes any consideration she's getting from Helena is currently for Sarah's sake, so it makes them something like even.

"Hey. Welcome to Kirkwall."

Helena isn't quite sure what to do. She looks to Sarah for instruction, gently but firmly catches Cosima's hand, and turns it over, holds onto it, briefly leans down to sniff at it.

"You smell much cleaner than many in Kirkwalls." A little shrug, awkward. "It is nice to meet you, sestra Cosima."

There is something a little stiff, almost robotic seeming in how she speaks, but the way she looks to Sarah for approval, to see if she did that right, might give away that she's not entirely as alarming as she appears.

Sarah watches with alarm as Helena sniffs their sister, but... at least she's not biting her? Or stabbing her? So all things considered, this is going very well. She nods when she sees Helena look to her for approval. Her shoulders relax the tiniest bit.

"It's not hard to smell nicer than these people," she mutters, giving a sideways glance to some of the other clientele in the tavern. "No offense," she adds to Cosima, as she takes a seat next to Helena.

Edited 2018-04-11 02:36 (UTC)

Contrarily, the sniffing actually makes Cosima crack a smile. It's ridiculous but... so is most of her life, right now. "Hey, most people are fine. Maybe not the patrons of this particular establishment, though."

Cosima moves to sit too. "It's nice to meet you too, Helena," she adds. "Welcome to Thedas. I heard you got a shittier than average introduction."

"Yes," she confirms, relaxing a bit as Sarah and Cosima claim seats. "I stabbed giant woman in leg. She arrested me."

Being chained up is boring. And limiting. And she had plans of ways to break out of it, but Iorveth told her that she needed to behave to keep Sarah safe, make sure they got out of tundra. That's the bad part Cosima was referring to, right? "And much hunger. But Iorveth has giant green chicken. He is friend."

Oh, bloody hell.

Sarah's face goes rigid, and then slackens as she lets her mouth drop open in an exaggerated expression of annoyance. Because apparently this is how she has to communicate when she wants Helena to stop doing something. Taking away her shit doesn't work, and it seems neither does asking like a normal human being.

She taps her fingers along the tabletop in a classic fidgety Sarah move and mutters in Cosima's direction, "Yeah, there was an incident. It won't happen again. Will it, meathead." Not a question.

"Um." Cosima... really isn't quite sure how to handle that particular conversational twist. "Who was it?" is all she can think to ask, because beyond 'not Herian,' she really has no idea and that seems like it might be important.

(She doubts there's going to be a lot of confusion between clones unless Sarah starts actively cloneswapping, but it's not like anyone with eyes will miss that they're related. If someone's got a grudge, it might be good to know ahead of time.)

“Knight woman.” What was her name? “Chicken coop.”

She is a little distracted, and leans towards Sarah. “When do we eat?”

She fails to say that it won’t happen again. Sorry, sestra.

Edited 2018-04-13 00:00 (UTC)

Sarah opens her mouth to say no, they're not eating right now, this is an important conversation—but then she stops herself, because actually, if Helena is eating she'll probably be easier to keep happy.

"Fine, go order some food if you want," she says. "And get drinks, yeah?" She figures Helena's got money somewhere. Sarah doesn't.

It takes Cosima a second, so Helena's possibly gotten up to get food by the time she blurts out, "Wait, Ser Coupe the templar?"

Great.

"That's, um. She's the head of the Forces division." So the fact that Helena's not in jail speaks well to Sarah's persuasiveness, Coupe's patience or both.

Helena has money. She has money largely because she stole it. Not need for details. Standing by the time Cosima speaks, Helena thinks for a moment, before nodding the affirmative.

"Head of Forces should have better armour," is her helpful observation, before she nods to Sarah, and disappears off for a few minutes to order food and get drinks.

Sarah waits until Helena is out of earshot, rubbing at one temple as if she has a headache. "I'm tired," she admits to Cosima in a low voice.

It's not just dealing with Helena but with all of it—everything happening back home, all the things Cosima doesn't know about yet, the fact that they're stuck here now and no one knows when they'll be able to leave. She wants to lay everything out for Cosima right now, like draining an infection, because then at least she won't be alone in what she knows. But that wouldn't be fair, would it.

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