faderift | he's keeping busy as he's bleeding stones, his machinations and his palindromes.

“It’d be quite the feather in my cap, the Research Provost coming down here to spend their valuable time disinfecting surfaces. I can’t imagine Tony ever having done it. If anything, he’d design some ingenious factory contraption to automatically roll bandages for us. Recreate the industrial revolution.” Strange sets his papers aside, moves to shift gears and join her at the stack of linen. It’s good, rote work you can do with your hands and turn off your brain: possibly a good break from whatever she’s been dealing with upstairs.

“It’s been… surprisingly quiet, actually? Knock on wood but we haven’t been deployed to something like a Starkhaven lately, so mostly I’m trying to ensure we’re ready for the next one. Having the supplies in order. Setting up posted rotations so people always have an available healer or medic to contact on the crystals, even if this room’s empty.”

A beat. There have been so many empty rooms lately —

“You’ve a heavier mantle to wear.”

The idea of Tony's theoretical bandage-rolling device gets a small smile from her, but it fades a bit as he continues. "We've been shrinking for a while," she says, after a short pause. "So in some ways heavier, in other ways ... I've just got to get really aggressive with prioritizing. I think once I settle in, I'll reach out to division members, see where their heads are at. It may not fully make the call for me, but worth knowing either way."

She looks down at what she's rolling so she can tuck in the ends in correctly. "I don't remember if I told you. The first time I came to Thedas I was sick. I was in the infirmary a lot. I think it means it's always a little more on my mind, I guess, than it would be for some people. We were still with the Inquisition then, things were different in a lot of ways."

“You hadn’t, no, but I read your notes on the blood plague, I was actually just refreshing my memory on that for rather obvious reasons—” The head healer glances back over his shoulder, to the desk and the stack of papers and reports he’s taken out on loan, but then pauses. Parses the particular way she’d phrased it; the way it had sounded like something specific to Cosima herself, and not something run rampant through the entire organisation, affecting templars and rifters alike.

“Unless— this was something separate.”

"No," she confirms. "Not blood plague, everyone got to enjoy that one together. This was." She exhales. "OK, do you want the long version, or the relevant-to-this-conversation version? I don't mind either, but I don't know how much of a side track you want to go down with me about it." It sounds like there's a substantial amount, but she's also fairly confident she can sum up the most critical bits.

Strange starts to wind a skein of bandages, automatically and thoughtlessly busying himself with his hands even as he mostly looks over at her, more of his attention riveted on Cosima herself.

“We’ve got time,” he says. “Also, I’m prone to side tracks, and I’m interested in medical things. Gimme the long version.”

She gives him a little, wry smile as if to say brace yourself, Strange, and says. "OK, I can't remember if we talked about it, but you were with us when we hopped between those Fade-versions of a bunch of rifters' worlds about a year ago, right? I remember seeing your Times Square, wild. So ... you probably didn't miss the other women hanging around with my face."

Depending where he was when, he could have encountered any combination of Alison, Sarah or Rachel; the Canadian soccer mom, the British con artist or the British evil corporate executive all different enough from Cosima to make an impression, presumably.

"I don't remember if I said at the time, while we were in there we were kind of goal-focused and Alison doesn't like people to say 'clone' in front of her, but ... yeah. Human cloning was viable as of the 1980s in my universe, and I'm the proof. Well. A fraction of the proof, anyway." She glances over to gauge. It probably says something that she truly can't remember if he knows this or not. It had been something so monumental at home, but as long as she's been in Thedas, she's mainly used to people not really getting why it's a big deal. It's made her more casual about it herself, in some ways. At least until she remembers she's talking to a medical doctor who actually understands what that would entail, for whom this will hit differently if it's news.

It hits— not exactly like a tonne of bricks, but at least tripping on a rake and having it smack him in the face. Because Strange takes in that piece of information, and feels a complete ninny: “Is it ridiculous if I said I thought three of you were triplets? Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation had seemed the most viable. Christ. I didn’t even second-guess it.”

But for all that it’s a startling relevation, mostly what it gets from him is a thoughtful expression, chewing over those implications.

“You probably noticed on the trip through my and Tony’s world: we’re more technologically-advanced in general than some of the other twenty-first century Earths. I wouldn’t be surprised if some biotech subsidiary of Stark Industries would’ve gotten there eventually, with cloning. But to my knowledge, we hadn’t cracked it yet. So it’s… commonplace, where you’re from?”

Her laugh is a little rueful. "No, definitely not common. So, I don't even know all of it, but... in the 1980s, there was basically a coalition between a military program, a biotech company and some like, I guess, cultists? It's a big mess, but the highlights are that they set up two programs to experiment with human cloning. The one I came from, Leda, put nearly all the clones with unwitting parents. Mine were using IVF, and I think that's true in a lot of cases. They didn't have any reason to think I wasn't theirs. In other cases, the program used surrogate mothers and then put the baby in an adoption system. They wanted to do ... a fucking lot of contradictory things, but I think this part of the approach was about epigenetics. Nature and nurture. They spread us out far enough geographically that the likelihood we'd ever run across each other by chance was supposed to be really low."

She exhales. It's a story that doesn't get any less wild for the retelling, and picking what to summarize and what to gloss over is weirdly challenging. (At least she trusts that Strange won't hesitate to ask follow-up questions.) For now, she goes on:

"I found out because one of my sisters was a cop in Toronto. She'd been contacted another clone after there'd been a spate of killings in Europe that targeted us. The Canadian, Beth, she ran a facial recognition search. Got a few of us from North American driver's licenses. Believe me, I did have a minute to appreciate the irony of finding out I was a clone while I was working on a dissertation on epigenetic influence on clone cells, like, wow, on the nose much?" A flash of a rueful smile. "But. Anyway, this is a really long answer to your original question, but ... it turns out that I got pulled into the clone stuff really fast and really hard because most of the clones had a genetic disorder. Progressive and eventually terminal."

Strange listens intently. Evolutionary biology and genetics aren’t his field, just as neuroscience or general medicine isn’t Cosima’s, but he’s tapped in enough to be deeply interested: the insane ethical violations, the implications. She gets to see him do a double-take at cultists?? but he doesn’t interrupt, and instead lets Cosima finish.

After she tapers off, he sorts through his reaction like shuffling a deck of cards. His hands had gone still on the piles of fabric; he only realises it after the fact, and then spurs himself back into motion to keep winding those bandages.

“So… not quite so viable,” is what Strange settles on, which isn’t exactly the most tactful thing to say, but he’s blanking on how else to address it. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like, devouring resources looking for a cure to a problem—” He stops, cuts himself off, because this isn’t about him. “So its effects were still lasting even here in Thedas, if you were spending a lot of time in the infirmary? What changed?”

"Yeah," to the not quite viable comment. Her tone is a little wry. "They wanted to make us sterile, so they kept control of the experiment, but the infertility tinkering set off an epithelial cell disorder. It killed a few of us that I knew of. I was symptomatic, and that came with me the first time I was here. Weakness, coughing up blood, occasionally a seizure. How I transferred that to Thedas ... I still have a lot of mechanical questions about that, to be honest. But ..."

Something occurs to her. "Wait, I don't think we have any anymore. Have you run into 'spirit healing' as a concept yet?"

He nods crisply, and there’s a kind of world-weary flicker across his face, the impression of spirit healing being that darn roadrunner which remains dangling just out-of-reach.

“It’s been mentioned to me, I’ve heard it described, and I’d love to study it. But it remains a perpetual thorn in my side that we don’t have any specialists with Riftwatch currently, that I know of. It’s the sort of magical expertise I was probably searching for back on Earth, too, and never really found there either.”

"I couldn't tell you much about how it works mechanically, though not for lack of asking questions. But ... yeah. I got regular spirit healing treatments while I was here the first time. It didn't cure me, but it kept my condition stable. Nothing was progressing, at least."

She sets down the bandages, neatly coiled, and reaches for another batch. She's not ungrateful to have something to do with her hands during this. (It's struck her that it's contrary that she always his the urge to smoke when she thinks about the disease that had been shredding her lungs. Contrary or not, it happens.)

"So then I vanished from Thedas, right? And when I came back," or a new her had arrived with the old Thedas-Cosima's memories, a distinction she's not sure really matters in this instance, "me-at-home. Original Cosima. She'd found a cure. That's what I. She? God we need a better vocabulary for it, but back home, the last thing I remember before this time through the rift was that my partner and I were traveling the world, getting the cure to the other clones so they'd never have to worry about it."

“—huh,” Strange says, his movements pausing, because this particular detail instantly pings all his curiosity. Tony had mentioned getting memories from his dreams, but this seems more concrete, possibly tied to… Cosima vanishing and returning, so her body was re-made? Is that the difference?

The gears are turning and spinning in his head, wondering about the mechanics, the logic underpinning the nature of rifters. He’d like to believe that every mystery has an answer, so he keeps sinking his teeth into this one, even if the answers aren’t forthcoming. Likely won’t ever be coming.

Still: “And you were noticeably healthier when you came back? Symptoms gone? The spirit healing unnecessary?”

Edited 2024-03-03 22:07 (UTC)

"Yeah. Zero symptoms since I've been back. I'd love imaging powerful enough to look deeper into my cells to verify it, but I suspect they're in whatever state they were in at home when I came back here, you know. Can't prove it, but I've been here three years this time and if I were sick, I'd know. It wasn't subtle, once symptoms developed."

She's not unhappy the cure carried over. But it does suggest specific things about the nature of rifters that can get a bit existential if you dwell on them.

"It was gene therapy, back home, so not something you have to keep doing or re-upping or anything. But it's also like ... I don't know, actually, if there was any reason I had to be sick the first time I was in Thedas other than that I expected to be, because I was at home. If I'd come to Thedas while I was carrying the gene but before I was aware of it, I'm not sure it would have ever developed, you know? Can't prove it, but it's my suspicion."

Deeply existential, but he can’t avoid touching that hot stove even though it aches to dwell on—

“I hate it because we can’t prove it and this is such a mindfuck, but that makes sense, yeah.” There’s a thoughtful pause before Strange recycles another description, echoing someone else’s words: “Gwenaëlle’s described the concept behind rifters as a magically-charged spirit that dreamed itself so hard it became a person. Which, well, exactly tracks with what you’re saying. And when you consider that I brought an eyeball monster and an Armani suit with me. Maybe it’s… expectations, shaping reality. Even within the dream dimension in my universe, with enough conviction, you could meld and shape the landscape around you. This seems to be like that but to another level. Lucid dreaming on Fade steroids.”

"Yeah," is a little bit softer. "I don't know I'd use those words exactly but ... I think she's about where I am, with the theory of what rifters are. I do think we're people now, but as far as our origins, that tracks with everything I've seen. I wouldn't say it's provable, but it's a strong framework."

She does think they're people, now that they're here, and that's important. They can die here, for one thing. But it would also be asking a lot to ignore their origins and the unconventional ways they can come and go.

"We've come a ways, I think at first rifters tended to assume we'd physically traveled, and maybe could travel back. And there were a lot of natives who assumed new, creative demons. But ... powerful dreams become actual people tracks, for me. I don't like to ... sometimes it's rough. To push that toward new arrivals, especially when I can't be 100% sure."

“Oh yeah, for sure. The first time I was faced with that bit of knowledge, it made me want to lie down face-first on the floor making low gibbering noises.” Musing, he realises, “Gwenaëlle triggered that existential crisis too, actually. It’s probably best to ease the new arrivals into it more gently. Maybe better to just not think about it too much all. But,”

Strange gives Cosima a sidelong look, mentally donning his doctor’s hat in order to assess her state. She’s not Viktor. She’s not visibly frail, deteriorating. She’s standing here in the infirmary healthy as anything, stacking the bandages instead of ensconced in one of those hospital beds.

“I’m tremendously glad it worked out for you. That whatever whim of the universe aligned to re-make you, and that it re-made you healed. Also because I’m not a spirit healer so you would’ve been screwed in that regard, but, y’know.”

(He’s allergic to sincerity, usually cuts it with humour; but he tries.)

"I don't know Gwenaëlle that well, but we've both been here long enough that I think it's fair to say gently isn't her strongest suit." The observation isn't unkind; she has other merits, for all she and Cosima have never been especially close.

She smiles at the visible scan he gives her; she knows enough scientists to parse that look. "And thanks. I'm ... it's been a few years, now, so I'm finally trusting it, you know? When I first came back to Thedas, it's not like I could run any tests on myself, I just had lack of symptoms to go on. But it's..." She sighs, almost a laugh. "Look, everyone in Riftwatch knows I'm not built for fieldwork. But it's nice to feel like I'm not an active liability, you know?" And if she has to choose, just vanishing one day when the Fade decides it certainly beats dying the way she saw some of her sisters go at home. "Now I'm just your standard-issue indoor kid who read too much."

“Not so standard-issue,” Stephen points out, with an arch of an eyebrow. (Those papers on the blood plague, still sitting on his desk: her research, her assistance with the eventual cure.) “A smart-as-hell indoor kid. Your work’s saved people and helped push our understanding further and Riftwatch is the better for it. And,”

Oh, he didn’t exactly mean to stumble into this topic, but she says not built for fieldwork and he remembers, of course he remembers, that time they brought Cosima back from fieldwork gone horrendously wrong, her body so eerily untouched except for the glasses—

A little stilted: “Us losing you once was enough, I think. I’d prefer not to have a repeat.”

She's ready to make a joke about explaining her thesis to him, as possibly the only person in Thedas equipped to actually understand it, but the turn in his tone derails the joke before she says it. Instead, her expression falters.

She can't help the sudden realization that the only person she'd really shown much emotion to after Granitefell was Tony. Thinking of Tony, at the moment, definitely doesn't help.

Involuntarily, her eyes get a bit bright and she blinks a few times. "Yeah, um. It's. The very first field work I ever did, back when we were with the Inquisition, we got captured by the Venatori. And at the time, I thought wow, I've maxed out how badly it can go my first trip out, but I guess I was wrong, so." It's a little wavery to be the joke it's intended to be. She badly doesn't want to cry in front of this man, who surely doesn't want to see her cry either. But even as stilted as it was, though, Stephen's assertion she'd be missed (was missed) gets her in a place she wasn't expecting.

If Stephen were better at this, he might know how to navigate this sort of conversation more elegantly: should he pause what he’s doing, and reach out to hold her hand, although those occasions are so few and far between? Do people hug at times like this? He’s not a hugger.

Then again, if he were worse, he might have avoided saying it entirely, would have tried to gloss over what had happened and never even address anything of import. Except that this matters — Stephen has been learning to accept that it matters — and, so, he tries.

“Murphy’s Law. Never tempt it. Life can always find some new, unique, bizarre way of fucking things up.” Her eyes are misty and that makes him blink, himself, darting his gaze back down to the tabletop in front of them.

Cosima’s technically his boss now, but oddly, that seems to draw the cord tighter rather than set her aside at an aloof distance. He has always bonded best with the people he works closely with: the excuse to see each other day in and day out, to delegate and trust one another’s competence, particularly when you carry that shared language and humour.

Tony had been that, for him, too.

So, clearing his throat again:

“Also. So that it’s said. You’re gonna do great.”

It startles her into a laugh, for all it's a little watery at the edges still. "Hey, thanks. You know, hang around long enough, you get promoted." Not that she'd have wanted it at Tony's expense, but she assumes Stephen knows as much.

She quickly brushes a stray tear from her cheek, but the threat of actually crying seems to have mostly passed. She has to assume they're both relieved about that.

"It's good to have you here, you know. I know our worlds aren't exactly the same but ... closer than a lot of them. And now I can delegate the you should really wash your hands campaign at least some of the time, so that frees up a lot of brain space." It's warm, but it's only partially a joke.

“Oh my god, speaking of, you should see this.” Stephen sets down his stack of bandages and moves to start rummaging through one of the larger drawers of the desk. It’s a pivot which lets them both escape from these weightier, more emotional subjects, like pulling the ripcord on a parachute and bailing right out of there — but it’s also not only that. He thinks she might genuinely get a kick out of this.

Digging around, he finally finds a rolled-up paper. He hands it over.

“Please witness our first handwashing PSA poster. Edgard made it. I’ll be using his pain scale drawings, but this one’s for the recycling, unfortunately, and you’ll see why—”

The way she laughs in unguarded and genuine. "I mean," through giggles she can't quite suppress even after the initial suprise, "you could just cut it in half, there's a paper shortage and the top part is good." It's probably not that funny. But she and Stephen have both had a long few weeks and it's so genuine in its he's a little confused but he's got the spirit execution.

The release, either way, is real enough. Every now and then, it helps to have someone else see that something in ridiculous, the way impromptu common room karaoke helps, or even the pancakes that no one's ever gotten quite the same as Jude's. It's good to remember that their lives are not just their lost friends and bleakly long lists of war objectives. Not only that.

he's keeping busy as he's bleeding stones, his machinations and his palindromes.

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Please enjoy this raft of Orphan Black spoilers

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cw for brief mention of blood

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if you want, we can wrap in the name of post-tower chats

perf 💕