faderift | It's a fool who plays it cool

A muted little smile. She tends to feel, on balance, more like Jude does, but she doesn't expect it from other rifters, many of whom cling hard to the idea that they could get home, one day.

"Yeah. I mean, I can tell you for sure, when my memories of home started up again, after the first time I was in Thedas, there was no gap. I hadn't been missing, I woke up the morning after I went to sleep. Didn't remember anything about here. Or, as I think is more likely ... the me whose memories I got in addition when I came into Thedas the second time didn't have anything to remember, because she wasn't ever here. She was where she was, the whole time. And." She plays with her fork absently; this is also the crux of it for her, in a lot of ways.

"I don't think I'm physically exactly the same Cosima who was here in Thedas before, either. I mean, I have all my memories of being here the first time, so like, that gets into some philosophical waters I'm not fully equipped to navigate us through, but. I had a chronic disease at home, and I had it here last time. And I was cured, between my last time here and this one. And this time here, I'm healthy. But I think it's because this time, the Fade was building the body of a woman who knew she was healed, and last time it was building the body of a woman who knew she was sick. I can't prove that, but it feels most likely to me, based on all the evidence we have."

Peace eases into Jude's eyes as she speaks. He'd been picturing his pack splintered, fractured, broken- he is a metaphysical pillar for so many souls, keeping them grounded in the present, on their tenuous holds of reality. Shifters are connected to each other, and none so connected as wolves.

Nothing pack-bonds harder than humans and wolves, and shifters who are both are beyond the norm.

They feel each others' deaths. Cruelty reverberates. He's seen mated pairs suddenly sundered in violence and tragedy, an Alpha driven insane with grief, so much so that she nearly took her pack with her headlong into the darkness. It had taken a sentinel, half a dozen betas, and her son to surround her and bring her back to reality.

Jude is the center of so many tides, the point of gravity for so many currents, that his loss would devastate his pack in a way it would take years to rebuild.

She's telling him that the people he loves most are all safe.

It is lonely. And later, it will hurt.

But for now, he rides that high and listens.

"That sounds like an incredible gift," Jude says softly, catching his breath. "Living with chronic illness is far from easy. Obviously it's beside your point," he allows, with a dip of his head to one side.

"But if it works that way, I'm glad it does."

"I get why a lot of people resist the idea," she says, frank. "It's... it means that this life, however long or short, is all this version of us gets, as far as we know. That there's no going home one day. But. I'm with you. I'd rather my family and friends have Cosima prime than grieve or wonder what happened without ever getting an answer.

She exhales, playing with one of her rings absently. "You know, it's kind of funny. What we're discussing, it's what a lot of pop culture stuff about clones is about. The assumption that a clone is a copy of you, like a xerox. But clones aren't you, they're your siblings. It's like identical twins, it's not ... this. Where we're all carrying around memories duplicated from our selves at home."

She realizes, after a moment, that it's not self-evident why that's funny, so she adds: "I am one. A clone. It turns out. I didn't know until a couple years ago, but. Guess I'm just collecting major readjustments to my worldview at this point."

Jude can't say his eyebrows don't lift at the revelation, but frankly, he's seen so much frankly weird shit in the past few months that it doesn't immediate strike him as too far outside of the realm of weird shit he was dealing with already.

Maybe it's strange of him not to get ruffled, but he doesn't know any other way to be.

Instead, he thinks on it, passes her more cut fruit while his brows furrow and he puts one elbow on the countertop.

"Siblings or twins isn't quite right, either," he says slowly, tapping his fingers on the surface. "At some point, you diverged. You are no less yourself, you're just a version of yourself who went a different way."

He half-smiles.

"If we want to get into sci-fi bullshit. There are millions of us out there. All the branching possibilities. There's a me out there who decided to have a bagel one morning instead of a waffle, and that guy's married with three kids now. Or something."

The half-smile turns into a full-blown chuckle, but he's no less serious for it.

"At the point we diverged, we became our own people. No less ourselves. Just our own version of ourselves."

She takes the offered fruit. "No, the us back in our respective homes aren't even our clones, that was my point. They're us, just ... before. But this is the umpteenth day I've wished I knew more physics, biology doesn't prepare you for discussing the multiverse in any useful way."

She sits back a bit in her chair. "But rifters ... I do have to feel like we're a bit of a unique breed. We didn't make choices here at all until we fell out of a rift. And I think if we had a way to determine how physically old we are, like on a cellular level, I wouldn't expect any of us to be older than our arrivals. This isn't just a variant."

"Was talking about you, but I see what you're getting at."

Jude offers an apologetic smile, takes a bite of his own. He chews thoughtfully, watching her face.

"Does that make us any less real?" he asks. "Even if we were our original selves, all the proof we have of the past is our memories."

He strokes the grain of the wood, thoughtful.

"It seems to me that we carry the important parts with us."

"Oh," she says, with a brief smile off his clarification. "I got you. But no, back home, my sisters are my sisters. I don't look at them and see sliding doors me. Maybe briefly when we first met, but... a couple of them were here, years ago. I think if you'd met them, you'd..." She makes a small sound, sort of a verbal shrug. "Helena would like you, you know. She appreciates a man who appreciates his food."

A brief pause, and then: "I think it makes us, if anything, more real. You know? There was a time, less so now, but a lot of rifters were like ... why should I fight Corypheus. Why should I care? But if this theory's right, Thedas may not be the only would remember, but it's the only world we'll know firsthand. It's our home too. Plus," a small digression, "it is kind of shit not to care if a world is destroyed just because it's not your world, but I don't know how to explain that part to people it's not self-evident to."

Jude nods, caught up in the idea of sisters- because he would view it one way doesn't mean that another way doesn't also work, but it's still a fascinating concept. The rest, though:

A look crosses Jude's face, one of upset, disgust, confusion.

He's never understood the mentality of fuck you, I've got mine. It just doesn't compute. It's in part because of what he is, and it's in part because of who he is. A person can't live constantly wrapped in the thoughts and feelings of others and not care.

He tries to understand people who think differently, but ultimately he's not sure he ever will.

"Haven't met any of them," he admits. "And I'm glad for that."

"Yeah, it's an attitude that ebbs and flows, and thankfully we're on an ebb right now. But it's, you know, it can be hard to build much solidarity among rifters as a group when we're coming and going and there's sometimes a proportion of them that won't even bother to think about how their choices will affect people after they're gone. I think some of us who've been here the longest, like Madame de Cedoux, build more coalitions with native Riftwatch agents for exactly that reason."

She shrugs; it's speculation, but one based on observation.

"That said. I think I've met more people in Riftwatch who care than ones who don't. Our proportion's still pretty good."

Jude pauses, something in his eyes that doesn't quite take shape in his mouth, though he parts his lips to try to figure out how to consider it.

There is no framing the questions he has. Not entirely.

"Are Rifters mostly human?"

She gives it a moment of genuine thought. "...I think the majority. Rifters are, or at least appear as, always one of the native Thedosian races when we come through a rift. We've got at least one each rifter elf and Qunari right now, there have been a couple other rifter elves come through. Granted, some of the humans can do things that, to my knowledge, humans in my world don't do, but that's true of Thedosian natives. Still human."

It's a fool who plays it cool

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