Cosima Niehaus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
youwonscience) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2023-03-09 07:51 pm
youwonscience) wrote in faderift2023-03-09 07:51 pm
Entry tags:
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Open)
WHO: Cosima Niehaus, any Riftwatch personnel who have not been banished from the Gallows
WHAT: A chill birthday/dance party
WHEN:March Drakonis 9, evening
WHERE: Fourth floor of the former mage tower
WHAT: A chill birthday/dance party
WHEN:
WHERE: Fourth floor of the former mage tower
If they weren't hosting company, there probably would have been a sign or two. Cosima is not, however, entirely clear what the Chantry thinks of dancing. As it is, Cosima makes a point to tell those she's friendly with, as well as the entirety of the Research Division; she also makes it clear they should feel free to spread the word, that any Riftwatch agents who want to stop in are more than welcome. That word is: A quiet party with dancing, Drakonis 9, a couple hours after dinner.
Arrival
As Cosima currently has the fourth floor to herself, she hasn't set up in her own room, but rather the one across the way. She's pushed the furniture toward the edges of the room to make a larger dance floor and requisitioned some plates and cups (that she has promised very seriously to return all of). She has placed her approximation of an iPod shuffle in a bowl to attempt to amplify its sound a bit, and it's jauntily playing whatever random song it has decided to play at the moment. There are no real decorations to speak of, but she's thrown some extra cushions on the beds to encourage their use as makeshift couches.
For refreshments, she encouraged people to bring anything they wanted, but she's provided a good quantity of wine and one unfancy but large lemon cake. These she's purchased with her own funds, rather than begged from the kitchen.
The party is late enough that anyone other than those on particular assignments (or guard duty) should be done with work. The music is unlikely to get especially loud under the circumstances, and Cosima isn't looking to throw a rager anyway. She mainly wants to rope some people into dancing with her, and she's not going to be put off by claims of being bad at it. Those who arrive early are especially vulnerable to being grabbed by the hand and given a good-natured tug.
Later
For those who stay late (or arrive late), things chill out in the early hours. In addition to the wine, there's some smoking, and Cosima is inclined to conversation, curled up on one of the beds pushed against the wall. The music is still playing, but someone needed the bowl for something else, so it's necessarily even softer; the candles have burned down, giving the room a warmer glow.
If someone seems hesitant to come join her, Cosima's quick to wave them over with a languid loop of her arm, unwilling to see anyone left out even as things get mellow.
no subject
Contemplative, he’s looking at Cosima as she mentions being home again, and he’s finally putting two-and-two together that Cosima’s the only other person in the same position he and Tony and Jude were in. A small club: modern-day rifters who got to experience that brief glimmer of normalcy and being home again, and the conveniences of modern-day technology, before being hauled back to Thedas. At least the other Fade-crafted worlds they’d visited had either been medievalish, historicalish, or deeply fucked-up broken Seattle.
Do you get homesick? feels like a pointless question to ask. It’s not something they can change. And that hadn’t been home anyway.
“You mentioned the first time you were here,” Strange says, her words inadvertently catching at his curiosity. “How long have you been here, all told?”
no subject
After a moment, a joke: "That's why there's no candles on the cake."
(It isn't.)
no subject
Said carelessly; yet, also, with very great effort to sound very chill with it and not at all weirded-out by this existential conundrum. Gallow’s humour has typically been the way to go. He typically skims right over it.
“I was one of the people snapped out of existence, back home. I lost five years. Just blinked and skipped right past it. So counting shit like ‘how old am I now’ or ‘how long ago was this one thing’ gets so confusing.”
no subject
"So, wait, sorry if this is rude, I'm just catching up. You had a significant number of people just vanish for five years and then come back? That's ..." A little laugh. "Shit, man. It's a little different when it's a huge phenomenon, you can count rifters who've vanished and come back on your fingers."
no subject
If they’re going to talk about the Blip, though— “Can I get in on that?” he asks, pointing to one of Cosima’s elfroot joints which have been doing the rounds around the party. After they sort themselves out and get a hold of one, he takes a deep inhale, breathes it out easily.
(Not exactly the uptight, straight-laced Manhattan surgeon he’d once been. Time at Kamar-Taj had loosened him up; an altered state of consciousness had, in fact, been helpful for tapping into magic. Wong was big on shrooms.)
But thus buoyed, Strange is able to answer her properly. “When we say ‘significant’, think ‘fifty percent of the population of the entire universe’,” he says, as evenly as possible. “Literally trillions. Probably more, actually, once it gets into those bigger numbers. Uncountable, unfathomable. It was a randomised culling. The guy who did it was operating under the goal of ‘curing’ overpopulation and leaving enough resources for the survivors, and he succeeded. So. That happened. And it was like that for five years.”
It’s no wonder no one really liked to talk about it much, no matter which side of the coinflip they were on.
no subject
She shakes her head, as if shaking off the question. "Sorry," again, "that's not. You can talk about whatever part you want, if you want to, it's just a lot to wrap my head around, you know?" They've been actively trying to save the world since she arrived in Thedas. The stakes have been appropriately high. But even Corypheus, as far as she's aware, wants people to rule more than he wants some sort of sick math equation to balance.
(Involuntarily, she thinks of Maris: the Venatori's patient, methodical parody of logic. But it's a thought she doesn't want to linger over, so she pushes it firmly away in favor of listening to whatever Strange chooses to share.)
no subject
By now, he’s had a couple years to chew over it. Slowly coming to terms with what happened. It’s gotten a little easier to look back on the battle the more distance he gets from it — and a little harder, when he has to look someone in the face and try to defend his own decisions.
(Doctor West’s accusing face, the bitterness in his voice. Did it have to happen that way? Was there any other path?)
“Honestly, I think it was probably easier for us who died, then came back in the blink of an eye. Everyone else— they had to live with it for five years. That colossal, world-wide grief and hopelessness. For half a decade.”
It’s ugly.
no subject
"I got, uh, the smallest little taste of that once, back where I'm from. My partner got shot, and I was incorrectly told that it was fatal. Having her be alive again — I mean, she was alive the whole time, but you get me — it took a lot of adjusting. I can't imagine doing that after five years, with half the people I know. But I also ..." wry, "as I said, got a little taste of 'blipping' out and then back two years later here, and it's still weird. It had some collateral damage too, on a way smaller scale."
She takes a drag, then adds, "Not that I'm like ... trying to compare, Jesus, they're not the same, but I guess. I have a little bit of experience to extrapolate in both directions."
no subject
“No, the comparison is warranted,” Strange says. “Most people can empathise but not sympathise with something like that. And, I mean, fair enough, because it’s batshit. Everyone had to adjust together. I was given to understand that there were therapy groups specifically for it. What do we do now that they’re gone, etc.”
It occurs to him that people at Riftwatch would know how that feels, when their rifters vanish. It feels a delicate thing to broach the impermanence of their own dubious existence, however, and so he winds up taking another angle instead. Cosima’s given him a touch of personal history, and so politeness leads Strange to dole out his own admission:
“I always thought my ex and I might get back together — maybe you know how it goes, the one who got away, you always intend to get back to it someday — but then I blinked and it’s been five years and she’s literally engaged to someone else. Losing half a decade like that. Collateral damage, as you say.”
no subject
"...I was engaged, when I was here the first time. I mean, we never got as far as ... I'm not entirely sure who would have legally married us. There was one rifter wedding I heard about but it had buy-in from an Orlesian duke, but we." A little shrug. "You know, we exchanged rings. Made promises." She takes a drag, choosing her words. "She didn't have any way to know I'd ever come back, and I think ... it seemed like it had been a hard few years. For her. She wasn't engaged to someone else, but we still couldn't put the pieces back together."
It still aches, talking about Herian, but time has helped. (The elfroot and the wine don't hurt, either.) She can't help a brief moment of wondering where she is now, what she's doing. But Cosima doesn't linger, hoping Strange takes it in the spirit intended: she sees him. She can understand, at least a little, that particular heartbreak.
no subject
— “That is a really weirdly specific overlap,” Strange says, because pointing it out and naming it for what it is punctures some of the gravity in the situation. There’s a touch of knowing, weary humour in his voice. What surreal shit they’ve been through.
“That’s a good way of putting it, though. Not being able to put the pieces back together. People change, after so much time like that. How does that Greek quote go— no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. The shape of it isn’t guaranteed to still jot together after so much has happened.”
The evening has taken on that sort of mood, the one where the party’s grown late and slow and contemplative: we’ve all been there. And Strange has spent too much time with Nepali monks over the last few years; he’s caught that philosophical streak, and the elfroot exacerbates it.
no subject
"You still carry people with you, though. Even if you don't fit anymore, even if part of you knows it's right that you both let go, it doesn't make it any easier. Hilariously," sort of, "the first time I was here I'd broken up with my girlfriend at home, and then she and I made it up in the new memories I got before my second time, so now I get to miss her and my ex fiancee from here, and it's ..." Another laugh, just a hint shaky. "It's not great, to be honest. But I wouldn't change it to not have been with either of them, you know?"
Better to have loved and lost, etc. She does believe that, even if it's especially lonely to put into practice the way she has.
no subject
But upon hearing her words, you still carry people with you, he can’t help but follow the thought down to its inevitable conclusion: some roads always lead to Christine, and that sentimental ache behind his breastbone whenever he thinks of her. Every universe where they didn’t work, which seems to be all of them. Every universe where she’s left him, or she died, or he died. The trick is to be grateful that he had any time at all and that it wasn’t worse, he supposes. They are still friends. They are still alive. He still loves her, as a friend. Maybe he’ll see her again someday.
His head tips back, still listening to the low sound of music from the impossible iPod. A beat, then, “I almost stuck myself down in the workroom all night. I’m glad I came. You throw a good party.”
places a bow for cosima's birthday