(Closed) The din in my head, it's too much and it's no good

[youwonscience]

WHO: Cosima, Ellis, Tony
WHAT: Catch-all for Research plot follow-ups
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Kirkwall and The Gallows
NOTES: No warnings thus far. If you want to hit me up for a bespoke starter here or in an inbox, just grab me oocly.

Starters below.

Comments

ten thousand years later

[heorte]

"I take the meaning," is maybe an overestimation of Ellis' talents at discerning slang from context clues. "You needn't apologize."

Especially because Ellis spends so much of his time with Tony, who has rarely taken the time to consider recalibrating his speech. Ellis is used to parsing unfamiliar dips in conversation.

"Could I ask you of it? Your shard?"

Which feels indelicate, particularly considering how little they know of each other. But Wysteria and her shard are never far from his mind these days. There's no illusions that he might come up with a solution, but perhaps—

From what he understands, Cosima has been here before. Short of needling Gwenaëlle Baudin, this might be the best person to ask.

time is fake

[youwonscience]

"Oh yeah, sure." If it's an indelicate question, she doesn't seem to mind, from the frankness of her tone. "I mean, there's still a lot I don't know. But I'm happy to answer whatever I can. And I've got some theories, though not enough data on that. Still. What's on your mind?"

[heorte]

"Does it pain you?" is maybe a little more blunt of a question than Cosima might have expected. But Ellis doesn't know how to dress this query up in a way that disarms it.

Shards are a delicate thing to speak of. Ellis has some sense of it, understanding what it is to have some foreign thing residing within your body, changing it beyond your knowledge. The only saving grace the shard might have is the visibility of it, how easy it is to mark and utilize.

But still, Wysteria's hand is not faring so well. Cosima has come and gone. Maybe she has some insight no one else has gained.

[youwonscience]

"Physically, not bad. It aches, sometimes, and closing a rift is a weird fucking feeling, but I've been lucky that I haven't had problems with it." She leans back, taking a sip of her pint. "It's, um, sort of existentially weird. The reminder of it. But given some of the alternatives, I can deal with that part."

[heorte]

"Existentially weird?" comes as a prompting echo.

He's asked as much as he can without being specific about his worries. And he isn't sure it's his place to share his concerns about Wysteria's shard. She wouldn't thank him for it, and Cosima might not be able to do much of anything for the situation anyway.

So instead, there's this question, prompting for something Ellis has certainly never experienced the equivalent of. Existentially weird seems a step beyond what Ellis had been thinking of a moment before.

time continues to be fake

[youwonscience]

"OK, well, unelss anyone's made any discoveries they're not sharing, no one is sure what Rifters are, right? So for us, in contrast to natives who caught a shard, it's like... well, it's in the name, right? An anchor. We're connected to the Fade."

She glances down at her own hand. She used to be scrupulous about fingerless gloves in Kirkwall proper, but these days, it's more for her comfort than for the comfort of those around her. People in Kirkwall have adjusted, in the time since she was last here.

"I think all the evidence points to us being some sort of metaphysical copies of our original selves," she says, after a short pause. "And that doesn't mean we're not real, or not people, or don't deserve rights. But it does mean, if it's true, that we all have to cope with the idea of the self we remember being just like ... going on with our lives, back home." A smile, a little more muted than Cosima usually is. "For me, the idea that I wasn't anywhere, or at least, not as a self I'd recognize, between the first and second times I was here. Thus. Existential weirdness."