faderift | open (like hermione's heart)

"Woof, I know. I've got a lot of interest in animals native to Thedas that don't exist back home, and like, half of what's out there is how to kill them. Another quarter is how to prepare them to eat." Not her areas of interest in any way. "Oh, wait, have you run across ... We've got a pamphlet somewhere that's more zoological. Granted, a pamphlet still isn't a book, but. Uh, Spada, I think is the author. Contemporary; I think some Riftwatch agents met her a while back."

Cosima comes over properly to join Hermione, her own book back where it goes. As predicted, she doesn't balk at the book stack. Instead, she asks, "The Commander have you looking for something, or is this extracurricular?" No judgment in her voice, if perhaps the lightest note of are you open to being poached to a division where books are your job?.

"I think I understand these things better if I can compare them to magical creatures or animals I am already familiar with," she says quickly, in complete agreement, already taking a note of Spada. Pamphlet or not, she's going to look for it.

She does follow Cosima's line of sight to her stack of books at that question, and lets out a quiet little laugh. "I doubt the Commander knows who I am." No judgement, and it can't be told that Hermione's been trying to climb up the ranks in Forces either. She's kept her head down where it mattered, and stuck her neck out when it mattered to her. If not for checking with the Commander whether he could spare her for the eluvian project, she's not sure she's exchanged more than three pleasantries with the man. "But he's a busy man, I'm sure," she adds.

It's not that she wouldn't gravitate towards Research. It's just that she can brew potions, think on her feet, and keep fighters alive longer. Forces makes her feel useful. (What if Research just makes her feel naive?)

"It's extracurricular," she finally answers. "I don't know if I'll ever run out of things to read to learn about Thedas, I just hate being thought of as the poor Rifter who hasn't got a clue."

"Riftwatch isn't that big, I'd lose a bet if he hasn't at least put a name to a face for everyone in Forces." Rowntree takes the job at least that seriously, she's sure. "But you're totally allowed to want to know things without it having an assignment to go with it. I think it's pretty natural for rifters."

Then again, she supposes she would, considering.

"Years ago, we had a wider problem with rifters who like.... didn't think this was real. Or maybe it was real, but it didn't matter to them, they were just marking time until they could figure out a way to leave. Even granted that we've learned things about the nature of rifters since then, it always struck me as kind of a shit attitude. You discover other worlds exist, and you aren't even lightly curious about the one you're now living in?" One problem, at least, Hermione doesn't seem to have. "I guess I shouldn't assume, though. I don't know enough about where you're from, maybe you knew that there were more worlds out there."

Whether that was a direct request for exposition or not, Cosima is going to get it. "I got introduced to the concept by necessity, before arriving here."

It's not much, by way of explanation, and this is the leader of Research. Hermione has to assume that curiosity would come with the job, and learning things? Part of the motivation, possibly. "I spent three years travelling through a different world from my own, with people who'd ended up there from just about everywhere, all with the promise that we would be returned to our respective homes. Every city, every country we ended in, they had these beacons that allowed my fellow travellers to return - though some would end up coming back, maybe by accident or irony. They would return, and talk about how it had been months or years for them back home, whereas for me it had been days of not seeing them."

Red, she remembers Red. How she'd shared a cot with the young girl after a world-ending battle one day, how she'd encountered her on a train weeks later, changed. Grown. Aged. And buried somewhere, amid all the emotions of that reunion and the fragile rebuilding of their friendship, had been Hermione and her realisation of all the missed opportunities.

She continues, "They wouldn't remember. If they used the beacons, and went home, they wouldn't remember anything from the travels and adventures in that place we were in together. Wouldn't remember anyone, either. Then they'd somehow return, and it would be a strange sort of situation. Knowing that your friends say they're glad to see you again, but they're still looking for a way back." A shrug. "I didn't use the beacon, until it was the very last one - and even then, I was afraid of forgetting everything..."

She grows quiet, her gaze drawn to her books. Then finally, looks back at Cosima. "It's real and it matters, and even if it's not the world Hermione Granger from England lives in, it's the world I live in. So yes, I'm curious about it."

Edited 2024-11-30 22:57 (UTC)

Cosima hops up to sit on the table she'd been leaning on as it's clear Hermione is taking the invitation to elaborate. She listens intently, nodding once or twice.

"You're not the very first person to come here from somewhere other than their home world, but it's not common. But I don't think it changes ... well, I don't know how existential you've gotten about rifters as a concept yet. But I have memories now I didn't have the first time I was in Thedas. So I can say for certain that the Cosima back in San Fransisco doesn't know anything about Corypheus or Riftwatch or any of the people I met here. I remember not knowing."

And this is the less existential version.

"But even the first time I was here. A lot of people live in this world, and as long as I'm here, it's my world too. Which is to say ... I get what you mean, I guess."

The other side of the mirror: Cosima. She's been here and there and back here again, from what she tells Hermione. She's done that thing that Hermione avoided for the longest time - return, and submit herself to forgetting.

At the core of it, though, there's understanding. If she could respect the Provost even more, she's found a way.

"That means a lot to hear." A pause, after which she sheepishly adds, "I'm sorry for just venting all my past experiences at you out of the blue."

"Hey, no, I asked. Or at least teed you up. Nothing to apologize for." And it's not as if she can't understand what Hermione's describing. Cosima was lucky, in her way, that she got her memories back her second time through a rift. She knows it can happen the other way, too. (They've had plenty of examples.)

"If anything," she adds, "I should apologize, I'm the one who took your frustrated remark to nobody in particular as an invitation to sit down with you, so like. Maybe you're dying to get back to the bone-dry dragon hunting." A little smile makes clear this is to lighten the mood and not anything Cosima is particularly worried about. It's a hand up to less fraught ground, if Hermione prefers it.

She'll take that hand up, with a quick and rueful little smile. "Yes, it's riveting reading material." She makes a big deal out of closing the book, and pushing it to the side, no bookmark - because she's that into the book. Clearly.

"Unsurprisingly, it's one of the best sort of resources to get insights into dragons as magical creatures, from their types to their physical descriptions. But the author keeps calling them mindless beasts every now and then, which..." She scrunches up her nose in distaste, as explanation.

Look, she likes dragons. Would never actually hunt dragons. (One of her best friends was a dragon, in the world before Thedas.)

"Which is more to say, I'm glad for your company."

"Yeah, tragically anything that can't communicate in a way the author understands doesn't have a mind isn't an attitude particular to Thedas. Ran into that one at home, too. Though I'd thought Thedas might be more open-minded, given that humans aren't the only game in town for language use." Apparently not, or at least not across the board. So it goes.

"What about dragons caught your attention, if you don't mind my asking? Not like ... dragons are inherently pretty cool, I just was wondering if you came in with a preexisting interest." Maybe not as fraught as what did you do before inter-world travel, or maybe the "history of magic" comment earlier suggests enough differences that Cosima doesn't want to assume a job the way she'd had one. Either way, Cosima likes knowing what people are interested in.

"Yes, rings a bell," she mutters under her breath at the ran into that one at home, too, but doesn't interrupt Cosima. Not only because interrupting would be rude, but because she's interested in what the woman has to say - genuinely.

She does falter a little at being asked about the dragons. "It's - complicated, a little. The world I come from originally, we have dragons there, but..." She glances down at the book with some disdain, her lips pursed together. There's a very particular reason why she looked for it, here.

"A very dear friend of mine, where I was before - he was one," she admits. It's not her secret to share, but surely Wrathion is not going to drop from a rift in the Fade and snap at her for not keeping his secret? (Was it really that much of a secret, when a handful of people in their party knew he was a dragon?) Regardless, she adds this a bit more quiet: "and I miss him. So I was mostly reading the book and thinking of what parts he'd be most offended by."

"Oh." Her tone softens a bit. "Yeah, good reason." A short pause, then she adds, " I do that too, you know. Think about things people I love who aren't here would like, or imagine conversations I might have with them about things I run into. It helps, some, I think. For me at least."

Everyone in the world likely misses someone or other, but rifters are in an especially complicated situation. People they love who aren't dead, but who are just as unreachable as if they were. Doubly complicated for someone like Hermione, with an extra world visit's worth of memories.

"Want to tell me about him?" An invitation, not a demand.

She thinks about Harry and Ron all the time. She thinks about what they would make of all this, and also lies awake at night sometimes dreading the thought of them actually ending up here.

It is nice, being seen. It feels like Cosima gets it, and that makes her smile a little softer at the woman, her shoulders sagging with relief. Good, she's not being weird.

"He would've hated the fact that dragons are hunted for sport here," she answers, blurted out. "And my gut instinct tells me the Riftwatch would end up having a gaggle of rescued dragons. Or - is it gaggle?" A handwave, it's irrelevant. "He was great. Confident, and intelligent, and generous with the people he liked. Funny, too."

"Sounds like someone I missed out on." Surely they both have a full list of those: people they wish their Riftwatch companions had a chance to meet. For Cosima, some of them are people who used to be in Riftwatch, which feels even more complicated.

(She has the thought that Hermione would like Jude, but then, everyone liked Jude. And there's a tug at Cosima's own memory, a blank where something should be, but she's gotten used to brushing past that.)

"How'd you first meet, do you remember? In the other place you were."

open (like hermione's heart)

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hermione greatly approves

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