( closed ) I see the world through a filter

[strangel]

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.

Comments

[strangel]

At the bar, Helena can be seen doing a number of things, not limited to pulling out a large bag of coin to pay (where did she get that), talking to the bar keep for a long time (he seems to be increasingly perplexed) and pointing to lots and lots of things.

There's also a tray in front of her with a jug of something on it already, and the bar keep is holding two more jugs, and handing Helena was looks to be a glass jar of a dark brown liquid (vinegar, maybe) with some stuff floating in it. Hopefully onions.

Hopefully. She has got this, you guys.

[youwonscience]

"You'd be okay," Cosima tells Sarah, with a smile. "You know, there's been a time or two I thought Wow, Sarah would be so much better at this than me. Mostly, um, running parts. But still." It's a joke, gentle and warm. It's hard to miss that she's a little more relaxed with Helena occupied elsewhere, but being reunited with Sarah is good in a way she hadn't expected entirely.

[coppelganger]

"Yeah." Sarah exhales and leans back in her chair, almost but not quite a stretch. "I was never really big on, like, fantasy books or any of that shit, though. This is like being inside one of those board games you like." Dungeons & Dragons & Bullshit, or whatever it's called.

She casts a glance over to where Helena is paying for... whatever it is she's buying. "This isn't exactly like the way you two met back home. Sorry."

[strangel]

Helena is carefully counting out her money, suspiciously almost. One might suspect she has little faith in the monetary system of the locals, but the barkeep seems relieved enough to get his money. Helena now has a tray that is definitely overburdened for the company it is headed towards.

"I got wine and mead and whiskey." A look between her sisters. "I did not know which you like." Or which I like, but she doesn't add that.

A small pot of mustard and another of sugar and, finally, she sets down the giant jar. There are onions in it, but there's also eggs, and maybe something else lurking in there. When she cracks it open, there is the sharp scent of vinegar, and she reaches in to pull out an egg and take a bite out of it, before nudging the jar towards Cosima.

[youwonscience]

"I'll take the wine, unless that's anyone else's first choice," Cosima says, more so someone will make a decision than because she feels strongly about it. (And maybe so she has something to do with her hands other than take a pickled egg.)

"So, Sarah, how do you remember Helena and I meeting? Or is that something it's easy to explain?" Given their lives, it might be too complex to easily sum up.

[coppelganger]

Sarah reaches for the whiskey. She studiously avoids looking at the pickled eggs. Jesus, Helena.

"Uh, it was at Felix's. Alison was there too, and... you guys met an old friend of mine." How to describe Cal, she's not sure, and saying "Kira's dad" so casually seems strange, when neither Cosima or Helena remember meeting him yet. "It was fun. We had a dance party." At this she gives Cosima a wry smile.

[strangel]

"Dance party?"

Helena has, in absence of her sisters accepting her generous good gift, dipped her hand back into the jar so she now has about five eggs before her. She shoves the rest of the first egg into her mouth, chewing open-mouthed, as she tears another in half and dunks it in the mustard, before picking up the sugar dish and shaking it over the mustard-slathered egg to leave it dusted with the sparkling crystals.

"Felix is... brother-sestra. Yes?" She has been trying to keep track. So many names, so many people.

[youwonscience]

"Oh man, I love a good dance party. I mean, the music on offer here is a bit, um, tabor and lute heavy, but in theory anyway." She manages to smile despite Helena's... Helena-ness with the eggs. "I bet Felix throws a good party of any kind."

Cosima herself doesn't know him that well yet -- they've mostly interacted over video chat, so far -- but he gives off that vibe.

"...though it's hard to imagine Alison loosening up that much," she adds, thoughtful.

[coppelganger]

Sarah snorts out a laugh around the bottle of whiskey. "She tried, but if that's how she sexy dances for Donnie, I bet they haven't shagged in years. Anyway, she and Felix are pretty close, so—" She shrugs as if that explains why Alison bothered dancing at all, which it probably does.

"And yeah," she adds, to Helena. "My brother, our family."

[strangel]

With the whiskey claimed by Sarah, and the wine claimed by Cosima, Helena pours herself something from the jug of mead. And then she sniffs it, sips it, and points in a silent question to Sarah's whiskey, asking permission to pour some of that in, too.

"What is Alison being like?" She is quieter, now, curious. They are laughing and smiling so easily. It is— it feels strange to be around, makes knots tangle in her gut.

[youwonscience]

"Oh man, Alison." Cosima smiles a little, relaxing a little as this seems to be going mostly well. At least not badly. "I think she had her entire life planned out to the day, start to finish, you know? We didn't fit with the plan especially well, the rest of us. She's very... uh. Structured." Cosima does not attempt an impression, which is almost certainly for the best.

To Sarah: "So she and Donnie made it up then? That wasn't totally a sure thing, last I heard."

[coppelganger]

"They did," Sarah says, drawing out the last word while she decides how much to say. "Turns out he was her monitor after all, but he didn't know for what. He's a moron, but not malicious."

She takes another drink, relaxing a bit more, and then turns to Helena, smiling. "She's kinda uptight, that's all. She's got two kids and she's really involved in suburbia. Like community theater and... coaching soccer... and shit like that." You know, suburban things. "But she's great. Really."

[strangel]

They are talking about things and people she does not understand, and she looks a little confused for a moment as she looks between the two of them. On the plus side, them talking gives Helena more side to eat.

On the down side, they gave Helena more time to eat. Three eggs disappear in the time they are speaking, and she gently reaches past Sarah to take the jug of whiskey and pour some into her mead, as her other hand reaches to pull an onion out of the jar of vinegar. Except, something registers in her mind, belatedly, and she stops with her hand still in the jar.

"She has children? Like Kira?" But was Kira not miracle? Impossible baby?

[youwonscience]

"Adopted," Cosima clarifies. "She and Donnie couldn't have kids biologically." Weird eating habits aside, Helena seems (at least for now), calm and curious. For all Cosima's giving her a chance for Sarah's sake, Helena genuinely doesn't seem threatening in the moment, which makes things easier. "She takes good care of them," she adds loyally of Alison; it's not a life she has much connection to, but Alison clearly wants to give her family something affectionate and stable, which Cosima can respect.

(It seems a world away from Thedas, suddenly real when it had felt distant for months prior to her sisters' arrival.)

[coppelganger]

"Oscar and Gemma," Sarah says, watching Helena and the whiskey. She hasn't met the kids herself, obviously, but she has pretended to be their mother a couple times and interacted with them by necessity. "They seem like nice kids."

Of course, thinking of Alison's kids makes her think of Kira, and her smile fades while she looks down at the table and drums her fingers against it. It's fine. It has to be fine. She and Kira would be in separate countries no matter what, right now.

[strangel]

Oscar, Gemma. She will be remembering.

A crunch of the onion, and she tilts her head as she runs that through her head. She knew they could not have children. Maggie Chen had told Tomas.

"Because we are all abominations?"

That is why the Alison could not have babies the right way, like Sarah did. Without marrying probably less right and good, by the rules of the Church, but she could not find any fault with Kira, or with Sarah. And Sarah, she realises, is sad. She sets her onion down on the table, wipes her hand on her shirt, and gently pats Sarah's shoulder.

[youwonscience]

"Uh." Well, that was an abrupt return to earth. Cosima's less sure of her footing here, but offers: "A lot of people actually can't have biological children. It's not super uncommon. But it does seem like there's a genetic component, with us in particular. As far as I know, Sarah's the only one of us to give birth. But on the other hand, not all of us have tried."

She glances at Sarah. "It's possible I figured out more about it, back home, but science is kind of slow going here."

[coppelganger]

"Uh..." Sarah is torn between being thrown by Helena announcing they're all abominations, and being thrown that for once it's on her to explain something science-related to Cosima. "Yeah, it's some gene thing. I don't really know about it. It's connected to the—" She gestures vaguely to her chest. "Somehow."

Glancing to Helena, steals the whiskey back and says, "Whether we can have kids or not doesn't mean anything. It's all a bunch of random science shit."

[strangel]

“Bosoms?”

Offered uncertainly, but helpfully, to th and complete Sarah’s sentence based on her gesturing.

For the other matter she shrugs, watching as Sarah slides the whiskey away again, and takes a gulp of her mead cocktail. “Is what Tomas said.”

[youwonscience]

Cosima manages not to entirely smile at "bosoms," but it slightly breaks some tension.

"Some of us are sick," she says to Helena. "It makes us cough." Blood, but that's not necessary to explain why Sarah'd gestured to her chest. "And it means we can't have kids. I wonder if that was the point? I mean, it'd make a lot more sense; control the experiment by making sure we can't go spreading our copyrighted genes into the general population where they get harder to control. I can't think what the self-destruction would get them, not widespread like this."

She hasn't given Dyad this much thought in months, she realizes, startled. Corypheus might be trying to destroy the world, but at least it wasn't personal.

[coppelganger]

Sarah is uncomfortable having to be the person who attempts to explain what's going on with them, genetically speaking. She's nowhere near qualified, for one, and for two, this is all shit Cosima's already explained to her. Back home, in another universe. The whole thing is just... weird.

"The disease was a mistake. The infertility wasn't. I don't get how they're connected, though. That's all your thing." A quick glance at Cosima—there's still so much she doesn't even know yet—and then to Helena, checking for her reaction to all of this.

[strangel]

There is a long inhale, a hold of her breath, and a long exhale.

Changing women so they couldn't have babies. Self-destruction. She looks between Sarah, and Cosima, and her hands curl into fists, fingertips and chewed down nails scraping ineffectively cross the wooden surface. It is unnatural. Unnatural and cruel and wrong.

"They made babies and hurt them." Her nose and the corner of her mouth twitch very briefly. A sharp look to Sarah. "What about Kira?"

[youwonscience]

Cosima glances at Sarah, seeing if she wants to field this one first. She hasn't gotten as far as Sarah's Cosima has (as she has in the future?), but she has some theories about Kira. None she can test as long as they're in Thedas, though.

[coppelganger]

"What about Kira?"

It's three quarters a threat and one quarter an honest question. This is the hill she'll die on, no matter how many clues she gets to the contrary: nothing is wrong with Kira. Kira is completely normal. Kira will be safe.

[strangel]

“You had Kira. You can have babies. She is really miracle.”

Her breath wavers for a moment, and one of her hands drops to her abdomen, as she looks down. Memories are hazy and dim, but she pushes down the thought of the Prolethean farm.

“Are we different?”