faderift | wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast

"Maybe if you'd just asked me, and I could have told you that I didn't know, instead of immediately assuming I was, what, mocking you? Jesus, Herian."

This isn't how she wants this to go, and Herian's clearly not at her best. Cosima knows she should be the one to defuse the situation, but it's hard to just ignore the blow that had found a sensitive target.

"I assume the provost's wife knew I was back because when I got here a couple weeks ago I made a public announcement on the sending crystals. You weren't here. I was on my own, I was just trying to make the best of it."

“I would have come back.” Her head jerks up with that, and she hates that her eyes are glistening, and that iron control over her emotions feels out of reach. “If I had known you were returned, I would have travelled from Skyhold that very moment.”

Out of habit, Herian’s hand goes to the chain. The movement is stiff and sore, and she grasps the pendent as a means of self-comfort before catching herself and releasing it. On closer inspection, should Cosima wish to make it, the fine chain can be observed to be broken in a couple of places and tied back together.

There is an uncomfortable silence. Softly, she makes herself reply.

“It seemed— it seemed you had departed Kirkwall without mind of whether I knew you were returned.”

She swallows down the impulse to respond sharply. "...it was a mission already planned, just to the Wounded Coast. Our new head of Research asked if I'd go because it was partly based on my old notes, he thought I'd be useful. I hadn't even had any sign you'd gotten my message yet, you could have been anywhere on assignment." A pause, then she adds, "If you weren't hurt, I assume you could have told me you'd arrived by sending crystal when you got here, and I wouldn't have been herded by Franklin."

It had, in hindsight, an ironically on the nose Timmy fell down a well feeling.

"I would have tried to be here when you arrived, if I'd known you were coming."

She nods. It makes sense. So much of what Cosima says - by her biased assessment - finds its base in logic and reason and sense. Meanwhile she remained a brash fool.

“Have you not heard? I was too engaged in self-pity.”

Her shoulders slump very slightly, and she looks away - the last escape of the embarrassed and foolish. (Franklin, for that matter, has been looking between the two of them, and takes this moment to helpfully leap onto Herian’s bed. He lands squarely on her abdomen and she makes a quiet sound of pain as she shuffled down to her feet and circled himself between them: the noble pup croissant.

“This is not the reunion I’d have hoped for.”

Which is largely her fault, she is realises.

"Yeah, that makes two of us."

It's quieter. She didn't pick this fight, and she's not inclined to push to keep it going, but it's also made it hard to sort out any of the other complicated emotions she'd have been feeling even if it had gone better.

After a moment, she says, "You don't have to tell me how you got hurt if you don't want to. But it does seem like you have reason to, you know. Be at less than your best right now."

Herian tried to school together her thoughts. The pain is, admittedly, considerable - aches and dull thudding pain that goes on relentlessly whenever the last dose of a pain medication fades out, and she is mindful of the complexity and expense of their production. There will be emergencies where those are needed, and she survived the last stretch of the trip to Kirkwall without them. It’s seems the appropriately masochistic course as a personal recompense for acting so callously to one undeserving of it.

“I— if I could credit it solely to discomfort, that would be a relief.” No, this was her doing, pain or not. “On my return to Kirkwall to re-join with Riftwatch I crossed path with some bandits. They had a blood mage and one very able with the tossing off boulders.”
A flicker of a smile, self deprecating as she studies her hands to keep her from having to look at Cosima. Cosima who she had missed so painfully, and who she had hurt within moments of their being reacquainted.

“A recent wound was refreshed,” what a euphemism, “and I think some fractures sustained. I will be well again, so long as I can suffer stillness for a time.”

"Well, you know I can sympathize with the frustration of having to just lie there for a while." For all Cosima looks in good health just now, Herian has better reason to remember her close calls than most.

She exhales, gathering herself a bit now that Herian seems, if not calmer, at least less likely to snap at her. "...do you want my company, for a while?" It feels strange to have to ask, but under the circumstances it doesn't seem to go without saying. "I wanted to see you, but I can come back another time, if you'd rather." Or not. It hurts to imagine Herian doesn't want her company at all, but it also seems to be a possibility in a way it wouldn't have before Cosima arrived at the infirmary.

A little nod. She remembers it well. Part of the fear of that blue plague that descended had been that Cosima would over-exert herself, neglect her own well-being to such an extend that her own sickness would be exacerbated.

Herian, in a show of exactly how bad she is at staying still, braces her able arm on the frame of the bed so she can force herself more upright. A small and futile gesture, perhaps, but she if she can least attempt to sit upright perhaps she will feel more herself. She has to grit her teeth as she does it, and the results are honestly not that impressive, because her everything hurts. Still, she’s sitting up as she reaches one hand towards Cosima - albeit sheepishly.

“I would be very glad if you were to stay, although— given my behaviour I understand if that prospect is now— less appealing than once it was.”

It’s been a long time since she felt so formal and uncertain in Cosima’s presence, but then in fairness, it has been a long while since she was in Cosima’s presence at all.

She's tempted to ask so is that an apology, but that feels needlessly unkind, even if Herian did leave a bit of an emotional bruise. Instead Cosima comes to sit next to the bed, rather than on it. (She'd caught that groan when Franklin invited himself up.) And she does take the offered hand.

"There was no way this went it wouldn't be complicated," she says, finally. "I want to say I missed you, and I did, but only since I've been back. It's been a lot longer for you, and I get that. I didn't want to assume anything before you wrote me back."

“A little shy of two years.”

It is a painful confirmation, that Cosima had known her only when she returned. That she had been alone in the grief of separation.

Her hand is, at least, less battered than the rest of her.

“I did not— We had spoken of marriage.” Long ago, and maybe naively. “I had no interest in— casting that aside.”

Perhaps it could be argued that it was her obstinance, the value of her honour, standing by her oaths, that resulted in that rather than love. Or, perhaps that as a Knight-Enchanter serving an Inquisition and this a Divine that wished to see Circles restored and prior laws applied to mages upheld, she simply didn’t have the same opportunity. It was not as though she could produce easy evidence of what was in her heart. Herian’s gaze is down turned.

“But please know I make no assumptions, now you are returned. You are not— bound to me, and I know I am not as you remember.”

Mostly in the sense of being severely injured, having subjected Cosima to a burst of ill-temper, and also, depressed and dramatic as fuck. Well, that last bit might be familiar.

"I remember." If she hadn't at home, she remembers the engagement now, at least; it's something she's been thinking about often since the rift spat her back out on Thedosian soil. One more complicated thing. "Look, I'm not... I've got a couple years' worth of new memories too. It's complicated, and we probably shouldn't like ... set a date unless and until we have time to see how things are now. But Herian, I don't..."

She exhales, looking down at their hands. "It's not like I just stopped loving you. I didn't leave you on purpose. When I wrote you, I thought we might try. If it was what you wanted too, if you hadn't found someone else. I wouldn't have blamed you." So few rifters came back, there could have been no knowing Cosima ever would.

How is this more painful? Emotions that she had been so adept at locking away feel so raw in this moment, perhaps due to the exhaustion, the physical pain, the sharp reopening of another rather more metaphorical wound. Was it the cutting open of flesh so that it might finally heal, or just picking it over ruthlessly? Her mouth does not feel under her control - she is aware of is tugging sharply downwards and to one side, and she makes sure to be facing down as if that might revoke the familiarity Cosima once had with her body language, or conceal the threatful tears when they are so close together.

“I missed you.” There’s a crack in her voice that she can’t hide away, and she keeps her gaze turned down. Cowardice, now, as well as all else? It does not feel so different to a dam starting to break apart.

“You speak it true. We cannot simply resume and pretend all is as it was. There is— there is much new to learn and consider.“ Her breath shakes as she exhales, and she sighs with frustration as her lack of composure, and she stiffly wipes her eyes with the back of her other hand, facing away from Cosima as she does so. Bandages for absorbency, at least.

“Is all well at home? With Sarah and your sisters, as well?”

She softens a bit, at a slightly less fraught topic of conversation, letting Herian's confession go when it feels as if she's one raw nerve that even affectionate pressure might hurt.

"Yeah, they're good. Sarah and I got a lot closer, the past few years. Oh, um, Helena had twins, so I've got two new nephews, they're cute." Quieter, she adds: "I found our cure. Finally. That's what I was doing, when I came back, I was traveling the world to get it to my other sisters. Turns out there's a lot more of us than we knew." And now they'd all have a chance at a quiet, ordinary life if they wanted it. Of course, the cure meant a lot personally, too, but she expects she doesn't need to spell that out.

It takes a moment for that to fully register, around the headachy muddle that her mind seems to be reduced to. Exhaustion and emotional exertion are terrible, anyone who disagrees is a monster. Her brow furrows a moment, and though she hastily wipes her eyes again, Herian looks to Cosima with a smile, surprised and warm.

“You found a cure?” Her smile brightens, despite all the other complications of this conversation, and she looks at Cosima with renewed wonder. “You are truly beyond compare, Cosima.”

She remembers that day, carrying Cosima to the infirmary when they were barely known to one another, the need for regular visits and the exhaustion it could bring. “Congratulations hardly seem sufficient.”

It breaks her into a warmer smile. "Well, I had help, it wasn't just me. But thanks, yeah. It's big. It's been a few months, but I'm still getting used to it. You know, conceptually." She feels better, which is a big win on its own. But the long-term ramifications are still sinking in. She suspects that will take awhile.

She rests a hand on Herian's blanket, not touching her, but a little more relaxed all the same. "Now we can get you healed up, and we'll be in great shape." Sternly, to Franklin: "No catching a cold or anything, OK?"

Something about, we’ll be in great shape stirs hope in her, as foolish as she knows that to be. Cosima is just returned to Thedas, Herian remains emotionally raw and vulnerable. It is not the time for her focus to be cause on such matters, and yet.

“He is immune to any many of sickness. The sheer force of his optimism seems to chase away any miasma or infection.”

See, she remembers some of the stuff Cosima explained to her, even if old habits are hard to shake. Her gaze is caught in Cosima, though, as Franklin shimmies forward on his belly, and rolling on his back to request pats.

“That you and your sisters can be safe and well is... a relief beyond words. You all deserve every happiness, after all the turbulence you have endured.”

wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast

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cw injury metaphors bc big mood

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